The United States and China are ready to move forward with the TikTok agreement, according to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
Bessent already said last month that the two countries had reached a “framework” for an agreement during talks in Madrid, after which President Donald Trump signed an executive order to facilitate the deal.
Appearing on CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday morning, Bessent said the U.S. and China had reached a “final agreement on TikTok.”
“We reached an agreement in Madrid. As of today, we believe all the details have been worked out and the two leaders will finalize the deal in South Korea on Thursday,” Bessent said. He declined to discuss the details of the deal, but added: “My mission was to get the Chinese side to agree to approve the deal, and I believe we have successfully accomplished that over the past two days.”
President Trump has repeatedly extended the deadline for a law that requires TikTok owner ByteDance to sell the app or be banned in the United States.
Under the terms of his executive order, TikTok’s U.S. operations (including its recommendation algorithms, source code and content moderation) will be under the control of a new board of directors, and Oracle will be responsible for security operations.
Oracle (led by Trump ally Larry Ellison), Fox Corporation (owner of Fox News), Andreessen Horowitz, and Silver Lake Management are reported investors in the new venture, and Fox’s participation appears to have been confirmed by President Trump.
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Bessent, commenting today from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, said trade negotiators from China and the United States have also reached a framework for an agreement on tariffs and other trade issues.
U.S. trade negotiator Jamieson Greer told reporters that rare earth minerals were also on the table, but he did not say how. (China has announced that it will tighten export controls for these minerals, which are essential for manufacturing semiconductors and other high-tech products.)
“We talked about extending the ceasefire, we talked about rare earths, and of course we talked about all kinds of topics,” Greer said.
