A major agreement between the United States and China has removed the immediate threat of TikTok being banned in the U.S. Under the deal, TikTok’s U.S. operations will be separated from its Chinese parent company ByteDance within the next 90 days and placed under the control of American investors.
This decision has temporarily eliminated the risk of shutting down TikTok, which has more than 170 million users in the U.S. The forced sale order, previously postponed three times by former President Donald Trump, has now been halted thanks to this compromise.
Speaking at a White House briefing, Trump stated, “We have a deal with TikTok… We have a group of very big companies that want to buy it,” though he declined to share further details. His remarks came just one day before the deadline of September 17, which had been set for the app’s sale or ban.
According to the agreement, ByteDance has been granted an additional 90 days to transfer TikTok’s U.S. assets, with the process expected to be completed by December 16. The Wall Street Journal reported that the board of the newly created U.S. entity will be dominated by American members, with one member appointed directly by the U.S. government.
For a long time, U.S. officials have raised serious national security concerns about data protection and control over TikTok’s algorithm. The new agreement is expected to address these issues.
The deal is set to be formalized during a phone call on Friday between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. While the agreement secures TikTok’s presence in the U.S. market, key matters such as data oversight and algorithm transparency remain subjects of ongoing negotiations between the two sides.
