TikTok Will Be Majority Owned, Controlled by US Investors, White House Says
A tentative TikTok deal reached between the U.S. and China will ensure the app will be majority-owned by American investors and will give the U.S. control over its algorithm, senior White House officials said during a call with reporters Sept. 22. TikTok’s U.S. operations will be transferred “into a new joint venture” based in the U.S., with a board of directors that’s mostly American, an official said. Technology company Oracle will “serve as a security provider,” overseeing “top-to-bottom security throughout the company.”
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President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order “later this week” to announce that “the terms of this deal meet America's national security needs,” an official said. Trump earlier this month gave China’s ByteDance another extension to find a buyer for TikTok or face a U.S. ban on the social media application (see 2509160048). The order this week will extend that pause for 120 additional days to “allow the investor parties and the company to do all the implementation documents that are needed to get to closing.”
The White House official said “we feel confident that China has approved the deal and that all the necessary regulatory hurdles that go along with final approval of the deal will move forward.” But when pressed about whether the deal has been finalized by China, the official said there are still a “number of regulatory reviews that have to be cleared, both on the Chinese government side and on the U.S. government side.”
“On the Chinese government side, for example, I expect that there's going to be a need for an agency to issue an export license” to allow TikTok’s algorithm to be shared, the official said. “On the U.S. side, many of these investments have to go through clearances of reviews for things, like an antitrust review, and so it is the case that those reviews are still to be completed.” The official added that “we feel 100% confident that this deal will be approved and has been approved.”
The official also said the administration believes the agreement complies with the 2024 Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which requires China's ByteDance to divest TikTok or face a U.S. ban. Republican Rep. John Moolenaar, chair of the House Select Committee on China, has said he’s concerned the deal could allow China to continue to control or influence TikTok’s algorithm.
“We understand and hear the concerns, which are again entirely reasonable,” the White House official said. “When it comes to interacting with the Hill, I think they have consistently expressed not a belief that the deal is wrong, but really just an interest in learning more. And so we expect and plan to engage very fulsomely and vigorously with our colleagues on the Hill to make sure that they get the information they need and to show them what a great deal this is for the American people.”
The announcement comes more than two years after the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. first demanded that ByteDance sell its shares in TikTok or face a potential U.S. ban of the app (see 2303160020).