The US says a deal has been reached on TikTok, but details are sparse
A framework deal has been reached for the ownership of popular social video platform TikTok U S Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent explained after weekend exchange talks between the U S and China in Spain Bessent revealed in a press conference after the latest round of transaction talks between the worlds top two economies concluded in Madrid that U S President Donald Trump and Chinese Premier Xi Jinping would speak on Friday to possibly finalize the deal Bessent noted that the objective of the framework deal on the social media platform would be to switch to US ownership Bessent mentioned that Trump and Xi would speak on Friday to complete the deal We are not going to talk about the commercial terms of the deal Bessent revealed It s between two private parties But the commercial terms have been agreed upon Chinese functionaries have yet to confirm Bessent s declaration and were not present at the press conference The meeting in Madrid is the fourth round of business talks between United States and Chinese administrators since Trump launched a tariff war on Chinese goods in April Now the two governments are planning for a practicable summit between Trump and Xi though nothing has been established Analysts say there are workable exchange bumps that could delay the visit During Joe Biden s Democratic presidency Congress and the White House used national measure grounds to approve a U S ban on TikTok unless its parent company ByteDance sold its controlling stake Trump has repeatedly extended the deadline for shutting down TikTok even though the law allows for just one -day reprieve and only if there s a deal on the table and a formal notification to Congress TikTok is one of more than apps developed in the past decade by ByteDance a hardware firm founded in by Chinese entrepreneur Zhang Yiming and headquartered in Beijing s northwestern Haidian district In ByteDance launched a short-form video platform called Douyin in China and followed up with an international version called TikTok It then bought Musical ly a lip-syncing platform popular with teens in the U S and Europe and combined it with TikTok while keeping the app separate from Douyin Soon after the app boomed in popularity in the U S and countless other countries becoming the first Chinese platform to make serious inroads in the West Unlike other social media platforms that focused on cultivating connections among users TikTok tailored content to people s interests The often silly videos and music clips content creators posted gave TikTok an image as a sunny corner of the internet where users could find fun and a sense of authenticity Finding an audience on the platform helped launch the careers of music artists like Lil Nas X TikTok gained more traction during the shutdowns of the COVID- pandemic when short dances that went viral became a mainstay of the app To better compete Instagram and YouTube eventually came out with their own tools for making short-form videos respectively known as Reels and Shorts By that point TikTok was a bona fide hit Challenges came in tandem with TikTok s success U S authorities expressed concerns about the company s roots and ownership pointing to laws in China that require Chinese companies to hand over input requested by the executive Another concern became the proprietary algorithm that populates what users see on the app AP reporter Mark Sherman contributed to this story Source
