Donald Trump has praised a TikTok “deal” with China for the better part of this week, but experts say it is still far from being finalized after both sides revealed details of his phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The two leaders had their first phone call in three months on Friday, but nothing about the sale of the well-known social media app, which has 170 million US users.
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The version from Beijing was not as clear as Trump’s statement in a post following the call on Truth Social, which Trump later said in a post.
According to the meeting summary in Xinhua, Xi stated that “the Chinese government respects the will of firms and welcomes companies to conduct business negotiations on the basis of market rules to reach a solution that is compatible with Chinese laws and regulations while balancing interests,” according to the meeting summary, according to the Reuters news agency.
Experts didn’t seem surprised by this.
Trump is the type of person to frequently make announcements that there are agreements or agreements that still need to be finalized, according to Rachel Ziemba, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.
If that happens, Ziemba predicted that the bigger trade deal will likely be awaiting Trump and Xi’s meeting with Xi during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, which will begin in Gyeongju, South Korea, on October 31.
Experts concur that the leaders talking is in itself a sign of a thaw, especially given that Xi had previously refused to speak with Trump despite meetings held in Geneva, London, and most recently in Madrid, despite the lack of any particular developments from Friday’s call.
Wei Liang, a professor at Middlebury Institute of International Studies, where she specializes in international trade and Chinese foreign economic policy, said, “At least they have broken ice after a long while, and it seems like they are ready to negotiate other more difficult issues.”
Some scholars, she said, argued that the recent months were worse than the US and former Soviet Union’s Cold War, when both countries’ leaders at least had a hotline in place.
The request came days after Trump extended China’s ByteDance’s fourth-ever deadline to sell its stake in TikTok or face a US ban, as required by a law passed last year with overwhelming bipartisan support and later upheld by the Supreme Court.
If it occurs, it will be a very complicated transaction, according to Robert Rogowsky, an adjunct professor of trade and economic diplomacy at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, both because Beijing won’t leave the app and because there won’t be any rules or clarification for future owners.
The algorithm that chooses what we want to see is what gives TikTok its name, Rogowsky said.
The real issue with TikTok’s ownership is its “ability to influence” viewers through the algorithm, Rogowsky claimed, despite the focus on data security in recent discussions about the company’s ownership.
“Think about the power that the owners, the creators of that extraordinarily sophisticated algorithm that controls people’s viewing, when they are in direct control of a political party or group [aligned with one], have a lot of power over.”
According to Middlebury’s Liang, it’s unlikely that China will abandon the algorithm, and it’s anticipated that this agreement will result in a “mere exit” that would allow both the US and China to get what they want.
China’s “stronger, bolder position”
According to experts, a meeting between the two leaders will have to be hammer out a larger trade agreement on a number of other issues, including China’s purchase of Russian oil and access to US semiconductor chips.
According to Ziemba, “Trump himself is not in a position to impose new tariffs on China, and that is a reflection of the fact that the US government has conflicting interests with respect to China, and that the Chinese control some very important choke points,” he said.
Rogowsky agrees that “China is taking a much stronger, bolder position with regard to the US, partly because that’s how China operates.”
He added that Beijing may have some justification for that confidence, citing Beijing’s recent directive to businesses to refrain from purchasing chips from US-based Nvidia.
