This week, President of the United States Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order approving a deal to divest TikTok’s US operations from its parent company, ByteDance, in accordance with a 2024 law.
On Monday, the White House made the announcement regarding the deal. No further discussions with Beijing are planned, according to a senior official, who stated that the US believes China has approved the deal despite the fact that both sides still need additional paperwork.
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According to a law passed by Congress that required ByteDance to sell its US assets by January this year, Trump has attempted to stop TikTok, which has about 170 million American users.
As the Trump administration works to separate TikTok’s US operations, bring in American investors, and ensure the transaction complies with the requirements for divestment, the implementation of that deadline has been delayed until mid-December. The deadline was already delayed four times by the White House: in February, April, June, and last week.
The deal is valued at “many billions of dollars,” according to a White House official.
The White House claimed that there are still regulatory challenges, including potential antitrust scrutiny. The White House claims that US citizens would hold six of the seven board seats that would oversee the well-known short-form video app’s US operations despite not having a finalized the full list of investors. While TikTok in the US would be governed by a mix of existing US and international businesses as well as new investors unaffiliated with ByteDance, the company would retain less than 20% of the company’s ownership.
Silver Lake, Oracle, and Andreessen Horowitz are just a few of the names already given.
Larry Ellison, a close ally of Trump, and Marc Andreessen have previously acknowledged that he has spent a lot of time at the Florida resort since Trump won the 2024 election.
Trump made a note over the weekend that Fox News’ owners, the Murdoch family, are investors in the deal. Although it’s unclear how that definition of “patriotic” is defined, the White House stated that the investor base must be.
“Donald Trump just announced that he thinks criticism of him should be against the law. He is now tasked with guiding his billionaire political allies in one of the nation’s most well-known social media platforms. According to Seth Stern, director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, it would be foolish to believe that they won’t censor Trump’s critics while promoting content that appeals to him.
The White House refuted claims that TikTok’s new investors will use political messaging in some way.
“No one should take this utterly delusional conspiracy theory seriously,” according to the statement. According to White House spokesman Kush Desai, “media analysts” and fake news reporters should spend their time documenting how President Trump has come to an agreement to save TikTok without compromising our national and economic security,” Desai told Al Jazeera.
According to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, “TikTok users in the US will be able to see videos posted by users in other countries, and vice versa.”
User data from the US will be hosted on Oracle’s cloud infrastructure. According to The Wall Street Journal, engineers at the newly constructed company will be able to modify the app’s algorithm in the new structure.
According to Leavitt, the algorithm will be “trained, retrained, and operated in the United States outside of ByteDance control.”
According to The Associated Press news agency, which cited Trump administration officials who requested anonymity, Oracle would receive a copy of the algorithm. They claimed that this would help “prevent potential manipulation of addictive content.”
Regardless of the political connotations, Oracle investors are optimistic about the pending deal. The stock was up more than 5% as of 2:30 PM in New York (18:30 GMT).
The deal, according to the White House, would enable TikTok to generate up to $ 178 billion in economic activity over the course of four years.
The negotiations come as US media outlets are being closely watched more. Jimmy Kimmel made remarks about the Trump administration’s response to conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s death that the ABC TV network suspended from his late-night show indefinitely. Nexstar Media Group, which owns numerous local TV stations, including ABC affiliates, and is currently reviewing a merger with the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission, was the subject of the suspension. Jimmy Kimmel Live will no longer be broadcast on Nexstar’s stations.
Washington and Beijing are engaged in trade talks as part of the looming TikTok deal.
According to Maria Pechurina, director of international trade at Peacock Tariff Consulting, “For the US, continuing to operate TikTok is in line with political interests,” [for example, keeping young TikTok users engaged,” despite the initial desire to ban the platform due to national security concerns.
China hopes for more general reciprocal US concessions, including tariff rate reductions, easing investment restrictions, and progress in the discussion of semiconductor export controls, she continued.
Members of the US House of Representatives met with Chinese Premier Li Qiang in Beijing over the weekend in an effort to “break the ice” during the trade talks, which made extraordinary progress last week.
For the first time in three months after the news of the potential TikTok divestment, Trump spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday.
Source: Aljazeera
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