Donald Trump has signed an executive order outlining his plan to sell TikTok’s US operations to American and global investors.
The US president said he and China’s president Xi Jinping have now reached an agreement which will see TikTok continue operating in the US, separating the social media platform from its Chinese owner, ByteDance.
Trump said that Michael Dell, Rupert Murdoch and “probably four or five absolutely world-class investors” would be part of the deal.
Controlling around 45 per cent of TikTok US will be Oracle, a software company, private equity group Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi’s MGX, the Financial Times reports.
ByteDance will own 19.9 per cent, according to the newspaper, while US companies are expected to own around 80 per cent.
The new US company will be valued at around $14 billion, Vice President JD Vance said.
Trump said he had spoken to Xi about the deal and had “great respect” for him.
“We had a good talk,” the president added. “He gave us the go ahead.”
Trump has delayed enforcement of the law until December 16 amid efforts to extract TikTok’s US assets from the global platform, line up American investors and win approval from the Chinese government.
“There was some resistance on the Chinese side, but the fundamental thing that we wanted to accomplish is that we wanted to keep TikTok operating, but we also wanted to make sure that we protected Americans’ data privacy as required by law,” Vance said.
Trump has credited TikTok, which has 170 million American users, with helping him win reelection last year and has 15 million followers on his personal account. The White House also launched an official TikTok account last month.
“This is going to be American-operated all the way,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Thursday.
Speaking to reporters in the UK last week, he said of the deal: “The United States is getting a tremendous fee-plus—I call it a fee-plus—for just making the deal… And I don’t want to throw that out the window.”
Republican House lawmakers said they want to see more details of the deal to ensure it represents a clean break with China.
“As the details are finalised, we must ensure this deal protects American users from the influence and surveillance of CCP-aligned groups,” said representatives Brett Guthrie, Gus Bilirakis and Richard Hudson.
