TikTok is seen in the app store of an iPhone on January 8. President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order on September 25 that will clear the way for the completion of a deal to sell TikTok’s US assets to a consortium of American investors, a White House official told CNN.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday, clearing the way for the completion of a deal to sell TikTok’s US assets to a consortium of mostly American investors. The order marks an important procedural step toward finalizing the TikTok sale, but the deal is not yet complete.
Although both US and Chinese officials have signaled alignment on the deal’s framework, it will still likely require regulatory approvals from both countries. The full list of investors participating in the deal has not yet been released. However, during the signing event, Trump said Chinese leader Xi Jinping had green-lit the deal and expressed confidence that it would be completed.
“I had a very good talk with President Xi,” Trump said, referring to a Friday phone call between the two leaders. “And we talked about TikTok and other things, but we talked about TikTok and he gave us the go-ahead” for the deal.
Thursday’s executive order is expected to state that the deal constitutes a qualified divestiture as required by the ban-or-sale law that passed with strong bipartisan consensus last year. The US law, which went into effect in January, bans the app unless parent company ByteDance divests approximately 80% of its US assets to non-Chinese investors. President Trump has repeatedly delayed enforcement of this law.
The president is also expected to extend the pause on enforcing the law by another 120 days so that paperwork and regulatory approvals for the deal can be completed, a senior White House official said Monday. Trump recently extended the pause until December 16 — meaning that if the deal is completed, TikTok’s assets likely won’t be formally transferred until next year.
ByteDance is also expected to sign an agreement laying out the framework of the deal with one or more of the new investors this week.
The deal will hand control of TikTok’s US operations, along with a copy of the algorithm, to the new, US-based joint venture, according to the White House. That ownership group will have majority American investors — potentially including private equity firm Silver Lake and Lachlan Murdoch’s Fox Corp.— and be run by a majority American board of directors. ByteDance is expected to retain a stake no greater than 20%.
Oracle will oversee the app’s algorithm, as well as data and privacy issues, according to the White House.
Major questions about the deal remain, including whether it will require American users to download a separate US TikTok app after the deal is complete. And while the deal will preserve access to the platform for its 170 million American users, some have already begun to raise concerns about TikTok’s algorithm — which determines what users see on the platform — being controlled by an investor group that includes at least some Trump allies.
The expected deal lays the groundwork for the first in-person meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping since Trump returned to office. The leaders discussed the TikTok deal in a call on Friday and are expected to meet next month at the APEC Summit in South Korea.
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