President Trump, who led the accusation to prohibit Tiktok from the United States ago, seemed to claim the credit to have saved it in a decision which, according to him, should delight young voters.
Trump and the negotiators suggested on Monday that the short video platform belonging to the Chinese company Bytedance would avoid a ban.
It is a remarkable turn of events that could end a saga of several years around the fate of the popular platform, which has become one of the most desirable advantages of technology, even if it has been used as a geopolitical pawn reflecting the volatility of relations between China and the United States
Trump suggested on Monday that US and Chinese officials entered into an agreement before a deadline on Wednesday for Bytedance to sell Tiktok to a non -Chinese owner due to national security problems.
“An agreement was also concluded on a” certain “business that the young people of our country wanted to save a lot. They will be very happy! ”Wrote Trump in a job On his social media platform.
Trump said he would speak Chinese chief Xi Jinping on Friday.
Trump’s position came the same day as the Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, told journalists that there was a “executive” for a Tiktok agreement and that it should be finalized on Friday. US and Chinese officials organized commercial talks in Spain.
The American Treasury Department and Tiktok did not answer questions about the agreement.
Li Chenggang, representative of Chinese international trade and vice-minister of commerce, said that US and Chinese officials had “frank, in-depth and constructive communication” on commercial issues and Tiktok, XinhuaReported the Chinese State Media Agency.
China is opposed to “politicizations, instrumentalization and armament of technological and economic trade issues”, according to the report.
Tiktok, used by more than 170 million Americans, has faced the threat of an American ban for years. Democratic and republican politicians have expressed their fears that the Chinese government can force Byédance to share the User American data.
Tiktok said on his website that it has never been asked by the Chinese government to share American data and never, noting that it has protected American information in the Oracle Cloud and that its infrastructure is controlled by a data security entity that Tiktok has created.
Details on the operation of the agreement would always be troubled. Oracle, a technological company founded in California but which has moved its head office to Texas, saw its stock market by more than 2% on Monday in the midst of speculation that it could be involved in the agreement.
TiktokA platform on which people publish wacky videos of dance, musical clips, challenges and more, is popular among young people. Americans turn to the application to consume news, discover music and find other forms of entertainment. And politicians, including those of California, publish on Tiktok to reach young voters. The application includes a personalized video flow, showing the content of the users in which they are most likely to be interested.
The origins of Tiktok date from 2016, when Bytedance launched a short video platform called Douyin in China before publishing an international version called Tiktok. Bytedance then bought musical.ly, a lip synchronization platform based in Shanghai with an office in Santa Monica, and combined it with Tiktok.
Tiktok aggressively marketed the application in the United States and has teamed up with creators to fill the application with engaging content that can scroll through hours.
Its popularity climbed during the pandemic emergency COVID-19, when people turned to social media to find more ways to have fun while being stuck at home. Responding to the rise of Tiktok, popular social media platforms among young people like Instagram and YouTube have published new ways for people to share and modify short videos.
As Tiktok grew up, concerns about censorship, mental health damage, data confidentiality and national security have increased.
During Trump’s first term in 2020, he published an executive decree that demanded Bytedance to disintegrate Tiktok American operations after criticizing China for the way he managed the coronavirus. Tiktok continued the Trump administration and a federal judge blocked the application of the decree.
During the Biden administration, the president revoked Trump’s decree, but always expressed one who called for examining applications abroad which could present a risk of national security for the Americans.
The examination of the application of the two parties continued, which prompted the legislators to grill the director general of Tiktok, Shou Zi Zi, during a long audience in 2023.
President Biden in 2024 signed the law bipartite law which would oblige Bytedance to sell Tiktok by a certain deadline or that the application would be prohibited in the United States, the legal battle reached the Supreme Court of the United States, which confirmed the prohibition of Tiktok this year.
In January, Tiktok closed the application to the United States for less than a day, triggering an outcry from its users and exerting political pressure on Trump administration to save it. Trump delayed the application of the law and the deadline has been postponed several times, giving Tiktok and the time of Byédance to find a potential American buyer.
As Trump imposed prices on countries, including China, which also threatened to derail a potential agreement with Tiktok while the two countries negotiated trade.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
