US President Donald Trump is expected to sign this week to approve a contract this week that will approve a contract to sell China-based parent company Tiktok’s US business, in accordance with the 2024 law.
The White House announced the agreement Monday. A senior US official said the US believes China has approved the deal and that further consultations with Beijing are not planned despite the need for additional documents from both sides.
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Trump is prohibited under a law passed by Congress that prevents Tiktok, which has around 170 million American users, and requires US assets to be sold by January this year.
That deadline is delayed until mid-December, with the Trump administration separating Tiktok’s US operations, bringing in American investors and ensuring the deal meets the sale requirements. The White House has already postponed the deadline four times – February, April, June and last week.
White House officials said the deal was valued at “billions of dollars.”
According to the White House, regulatory hurdles, including scrutiny of potential antitrusts, remain. The full list of investors has not yet been finalized, according to the White House, but US citizens hold six of the seven seats that oversee the US business of the popular short video app. Although the ordinance maintains less than 20% ownership, the U.S. Tiktok is managed by a combination of existing US and global companies and new investors not associated with the ordinance.
Already named are venture capital firms Silver Lake, Oracle and Andreesen Horowitz.
Oracle Cofounder’s Larry Ellison is a close Trump ally, and Mark Andreesen has previously admitted that he has spent quite a bit of time at Trump’s Mar Lago resort in Florida since the 2024 election when Trump won.
Trump also said over the weekend that the Murdoch family, owners of Fox News, are investors in the deal. The White House said investors’ bases must be “patriotic,” but it is unclear how the standard is defined.
“Donald Trump said he thought his criticism should be illegal a few days ago. Now he’s piloting one of the nation’s most popular social media platforms to his billionaire political allies. It’s naive to think that they don’t censor Trump’s critics while pleased.”
The White House has condemned claims that new Tiktok investors would somehow promote a political message.
“This completely delusional theory of conspiracy is completely unfounded in reality and should not be taken seriously by anyone. Instead of promoting unfounded delusions, “media analysts” and fake news reporters should spend time covering the way President Trump signed a contract to build a contract to save Tiktok without undermining national and economic security.
“U.S. Tiktok users can see videos posted by users from other countries and vice versa,” White House press chief Karoline Leavitt told reporters Monday.
US user data is hosted on Oracle’s cloud infrastructure. The Wall Street Journal added that under the new structure, the reconfigured company engineers will have the ability to coordinate the app’s algorithms.
The algorithm will be “trained, retrained and operated in the United States outside of ordinance control,” Leavitt said.
According to the Associated Press, Oracle will receive a copy of the algorithm, citing Trump administration officials who requested anonymity. This “helps prevent potential manipulation of addictive content,” they said.
Regardless of political impact, Oracle investors are actively responding to the news of the looming deal. As of 2:30pm (18:30 GMT) in New York, inventory had risen by more than 5%.
The White House predicted that the deal would help Tiktok generate up to $178 billion in economic activity over the next four years.
The negotiations come amid the broader scrutiny of US media companies. The ABC TV network recently suspended comedian Jimmy Kimmel indefinitely from his late-night show after speaking out about the Trump administration’s response to the shooting death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. The suspension follows a backlash from Nexstar Media Group, with many local television stations running, including ABC affiliates, and currently has a merger under review by the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission. Nexstar said the station would stop carrying the show’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!
The looming Tiktok contract also occurs during trade talks between Washington and Beijing.
“For the United States, Tiktok’s ongoing operations are consistent with continued political interests with political interests despite national security concerns that sparked the initial desire to ban the platform (involving young Tiktok users, for example).”
“By making concessions on this transaction, China wants a broader mutual US concession, including reducing tariff charges, relaxing investment restrictions and progress in semiconductor export controls,” she added.
Over the weekend, US House members met with Beijing’s Chinese Prime Minister Li Qiang to “break the ice” during trade talks that made a rare advance last week.
Trump spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday for the first time in three months since the Tiktok announcement.
Oracle’s representative did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.
