The United States and China are ready to move forward with a TikTok deal, according to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
Bessent had already said last month that the two countries had reached a “framework” for a deal during talks in Madrid, and President Donald Trump subsequently signed an executive order to facilitate the transaction.
In a Sunday morning appearance on CBS’s Face the NationBessent said the US and China have reached “a final deal on TikTok”.
“We reached one in Madrid and I believe that as of today, all the details have been cleared up, and that will be for the two leaders to complete this transaction on Thursday in Korea,” Bessent said. He declined to discuss the details of the deal, but added: “My remit was to get the Chinese to agree to approve the transaction, and I think we’ve been successful in doing that over the last couple of days.”
Trump has repeatedly extended the deadline of a law requiring TikTok owner ByteDance to sell the app or see it banned in the United States.
Under the terms of his executive order, TikTok’s US operations — including its recommendation algorithm, source code and content moderation — will come under the control of a new board, with Oracle in charge of security operations.
Oracle (led by Trump ally Larry Ellison), Fox Corp (owner of Fox News), Andreessen Horowitz and Silver Lake Management have been cited as investors in the new joint venture, with Fox’s participation apparently confirmed by Trump.
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Bessent made today’s comments from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where Chinese and US trade negotiators also said they had they reached a framework agreement on tariffs and other trade issues.
US trade negotiator Jamieson Greer told reporters that rare earth minerals were covered in the discussion, although he did not specify how. (China has said it will tighten controls on exports of these minerals, which are critical to making semiconductors and other technology products.)
“We talked about extending the truce, we talked about rare earths, of course, we talked about all kinds of issues,” Greer said.
