US and China reach deal to transfer TikTok ownership, trade official says

Jamieson Greer, a US trade representative, said on Monday that Washington and Beijing have struck a framework agreement on transferring TikTok to US-controlled ownership.

Speaking after emerging from negotiations with Chinese officials, Scott Bessent said the deal was coming but declined to reveal the commercial terms.

“We have a framework for a TikTok deal,” the treasury secretary told reporters after coming out of high-level talks in Madrid. “We’re not going to talk about the commercial terms of the deal. It’s between two private parties, but the commercial terms have been agreed upon.”

The framework agreement is a breakthrough in the long-running dispute over TikTok’s ownership, which has raised national security concerns in Washington over the app’s Chinese parent company ByteDance. In April 2024, Joe Biden signed legislation that gave ByteDance nine months to sell the platform to a US-approved buyer or face a total ban – a deadline that Donald Trump has repeatedly extended.

Bessent said final details would be settled when Trump speaks with Xi Jinping, China’s president, on Friday. Greer confirmed that the agreement was now awaiting approval from both leaders.

“We’re not going to be in the business of having repetitive extensions,” Greer said. “We have a deal.”

More details soon…