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A TikTok deal has finally been reached with China, the Trump administration says

<i>Brook Joyner/CNN via CNN Newsource</i><br/>TikTok is seen in the app store of an iPhone on January 8.

By CNN Newsource

Published September 15, 2025 7:55 am

By David Goldman, CNN

(CNN) — A deal has been reached between the Trump administration and China to keep TikTok operational in the United States, administration officials announced Monday, concluding a yearslong effort that began during President Donald Trump’s first term.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that a framework agreement has been reached, and Trump will meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping Friday to finalize the deal.

“President Trump played a role in this, we had a call with him last night, we had specific guidance from him we shared it with our Chinese counterparts,” Bessent said in Madrid on Monday. “Without his leadership and the leverage he provides, we would not have been able to include the deal today.”

The Trump administration did not name the US-backed buyer, but the group is widely expected to be led by Oracle executive chairman Larry Ellison, who last week briefly became the world’s richest person. Trump in January had said he would champion Ellison, a Trump supporter, buying the app’s US assets.

Chinese and US diplomats have been meeting this week in Spain to discuss trade and other matters. Bessent, leading the latest round of trade talks with China on behalf of the United States, had said that TikTok was one of the subjects likely to be discussed.

“We were very focused on TikTok and making sure that it was a deal that is fair for the Chinese and completely respects US national security concerns, and that’s the deal we reached,” Bessent said. “And of course, we want to ensure that the Chinese have a fair, invested environment in the United States, but always that US national security comes first.”

Trump multiple times has extended a self-imposed deadline to reach a deal with China to sell at least part of TikTok parent company ByteDance’s US TikTok business to an American-backed owner. A bipartisan bill passed by Congress and signed by former President Joe Biden banned TikTok in the United States unless its China-based owner divested its stake in the US assets of the social media company.

TikTok briefly went dark in the United States on January 18, the day before the Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act went into effect. But on January 19, one day before Trump took office for his second term, he said he would sign an executive action upon the beginning of his term that would ensure US companies would not be punished for hosting TikTok on their app stores or servers.

The executive order, signed on January 20, delayed for 75 days the enforcement of the law. Trump extended the deadline again in June. The deadline had most recently been extended to September 17, but Trump was widely expected to move the deadline again if a deal didn’t come together in time.

The law gives the president broad discretion on how to enforce the ban. But critics have said Trump’s extensions thwarted the will of Congress.

Trump toward the end of his first term had advocated for banning TikTok — a policy he never got passed but which Biden eventually supported and signed into law. But Trump’s opinion eventually changed after he viewed the social media app as contributing to his election victory in 2024.

Who is buying TikTok?

Several investment groups have come forward in recent months saying that they would be interested in buying TikTok. Among the most prominent has been led by former Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt and investor Kevin O’Leary of “Shark Tank” fame, who have made several public pleas to own TikTok, and who made an offer to ByteDance.

But TikTok would likely cost more than the group can afford — likely in the tens of billions of dollars. So that group said it offered to purchase TikTok’s US assets without the app’s secret sauce: its algorithm that hooks users into watching video after video on the platform. They said they were convinced they could create a comparable algorithm from scratch.

That’s why industry analysts believe a much more likely candidate to buy TikTok’s US assets is Ellison, who has the capability of leading a group of investors with the money to buy the algorithm — and whose company already has a relationship with TikTok.

Oracle in 2020 began hosting TikTok’s US data, and it briefly reached a deal with the first Trump administration that year to buy TikTok, before that deal was ultimately blocked.

Trump on Monday hinted that a deal is now close.

“The big Trade Meeting in Europe between The United States of America, and China, has gone VERY WELL! It will be concluding shortly,” Trump said Monday in a post on Truth Social. “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.”