Trump says China’s President has approved a deal, which involves a US joint venture operating the video-sharing app and its algorithms. But when the transition will occur remains unclear.
Following months of negotiations, President Trump has signed an executive order for the US to take over ownership of TikTok from the Chinese company ByteDance.
On Thursday, Trump signed the order, which calls for a joint venture based in the US to run TikTok, including the video-sharing app’s algorithms and content moderation.
The joint venture will be “majority-owned and controlled by United States persons and will no longer be controlled by any foreign adversary,” the order says. Meanwhile ByteDance and its affiliates will only be able to take a 20% stake.
In addition, the deal requires TikTok’s US user data to be stored domestically to address concerns that the Chinese government could exploit the information for spying, although ByteDance has dismissed such concerns as fear-mongering.
The deal arrives after Congress and the Biden administration passed a US law to ban TikTok in an effort to force ByteDance to divest.
