The White House says an agreement on video platform TikTok’s US business is expected to be signed in the coming days.
White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt says details about TikTok’s future in the United States “have already been agreed upon”.
“Now we just need this deal to be signed and that will be happening, I anticipate, in the coming days,” Leavitt told US broadcaster Fox on Sunday.
TikTok’s parent company, Beijing-based ByteDance, has faced months of uncertainty over the app’s operations in the US, where it has about 170 million users.
US officials have expressed concern that the Chinese government could gain access to vast amounts of personal data and use the platform to exert political influence. TikTok and ByteDance have rejected this.
Under the deal, TikTok would be “majority-owned by Americans in the United States. There will be seven seats on the board, that controls the app in the United States, and six of those seats will be Americans”, Leavitt said.
The agreement would require that all data on American users will be stored on US cloud computing infrastructure run by US software firm Oracle.
“The data and privacy will be led by one of America’s greatest tech companies, Oracle, and the algorithm will also be controlled by America as well,” Leavitt said.
President Donald Trump is trying to keep the short video app with 170 million US users from being banned after Congress passed a law in 2024 that ordered it shut down by January 2025 if its US assets were not sold by owner ByteDance.
Trump has credited TikTok with helping him win re-election last year and has 15 million followers on his personal account. The White House also launched an official TikTok account last month.
Trump has granted extensions to the deadline, repeatedly delaying enforcement despite no legal basis for doing so.
Trump has delayed enforcement of the law amid efforts to extract TikTok’s US assets from the global platform, line up American investors and ensure the new ownership qualifies as a full divestiture needed under the 2024 law.
In the US, ByteDance – and thus also TikTok – are seen as Chinese companies. ByteDance counters that the company is 60 per cent owned by international investors and is based in the Cayman Islands.
However, ByteDance has a large headquarters in Beijing and is therefore subject to many Chinese regulations.
Although its founders hold only a 20 per cent stake, they reportedly retain control through shares with more voting rights.
The Wall Street Journal has previously reported that US investors including Oracle, which is owned by Trump supporter Larry Ellison, and the investment firms Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz were expected to hold 80 per cent of a new US TikTok subsidiary, with the remaining 20 per cent held by Chinese shareholders.
with reuters
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