Washington — U.S. and Chinese negotiators have agreed to the outlines of a deal to resolve the dispute over ownership of TikTok, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday, adding that President Trump is set to speak to Chinese President Xi Jinping later this week.
“We have a framework for a TikTok deal,” Bessent said after talks with Chinese officials in Spain. “The two leaders, President Trump and Party Chair Xi, will speak on Friday to complete the deal. But we do have a framework for a deal with TikTok.”
Bessent said the agreement is “between two private parties” and that “the commercial terms have been agreed upon.” He said the talks in Spain centered around the future of the app.
Mr. Trump hinted at the agreement in a post on Truth Social earlier Monday morning.
“The big Trade Meeting in Europe between The United States of America, and China, has gone VERY WELL! It will be concluding shortly,” the president wrote. “A deal was also reached on a ‘certain’ company that young people in our Country very much wanted to save. They will be very happy! I will be speaking to President Xi on Friday. The relationship remains a very strong one!!!”
Later Monday, Mr. Trump was asked by reporters whether China would have a stake in the company.
“We haven’t decided that,” he said.
A spokesperson to Vice President JD Vance said the deal means hundreds of millions of Americans will be able to continue using the app.
“President Trump and Vice President Vance provided the leadership and foresight necessary to produce a framework deal that fulfills another campaign promise and saves TikTok,” the spokesperson said.
In a briefing after Monday’s trade talks, a Chinese official said China “will firmly safeguard the national interests, the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese enterprises, and carry out technology export approval in accordance with relevant laws and regulations,” according to Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency.
The outlet said Chinese trade representative Li Chenggang conveyed that “China has always opposed politicization, instrumentalization and weaponization of technology and economic-trade matters and will never seek to reach any agreement at the expense of principles, interests of companies, or international fairness and justice.”
Last year, Congress passed and President Joe Biden signed a bill that essentially gave TikTok’s China-based parent company, ByteDance, an ultimatum: either divest from TikTok or face a ban in the United States. The Supreme Court upheld the law in a unanimous 9-0 decision. But Mr. Trump has issued a series of orders unilaterally delaying its enforcement. The latest came in June, when he pushed back the deadline for enforcing the measure until Sept. 17.
The president’s orders have directed the Justice Department not to take action or impose penalties against tech companies like Apple and Google for failing to comply with the law by allowing TikTok on their platforms.
Mr. Trump’s extensions have come as the U.S. tries to negotiate an agreement that would separate the hugely popular video-sharing app from ByteDance. The Trump administration appeared close to a deal in the spring, which would have spun TikTok’s U.S.-based operations into a new company owned and operated by a majority of American investors, and allowed ByteDance to maintain a minority stake. But Mr. Trump’s sweeping tariffs on Chinese imports scuttled the proposed deal.
ByteDance, however, refuted then that an agreement had been reached because there were still key issues unresolved. TikTok’s parent company said any deal regarding the app’s future would be subject to approval by the Chinese government.
Under the law, passed with bipartisan support by Congress in April 2024, TikTok had until Jan. 19 to divest from TikTok or be cut off from U.S. app stores and web-hosting services.
While TikTok briefly and voluntarily shut down ahead of the January deadline, it reinstated access to users in the U.S. after Mr. Trump vowed his administration would not enforce the ban.
While Congress has for years warned that TikTok raises national security concerns and allows China to collect sweeping amounts of data on Americans, the president has repeatedly expressed his affinity for TikTok because of its popularity with young people.
Still, some Republicans have been skeptical Mr. Trump has the legal authority to continue pushing the deadline for enforcing the TikTok ban and have said the law should be enforced.
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