Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says a deal to keep TikTok operating in the U.S is set to be finalized on Thursday when President Donald Trump is scheduled to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Speaking Sunday on CBS News' "Face the Nation," Bessent said the two sides came to an agreement during a recent meeting in Madrid.
"I believe that as of today, all the details are ironed out, and that will be for the two leaders to consummate that transaction on Thursday in Korea," he said.
Bessent was speaking from Malaysia, where he joined President Trump on his three-country Asia trade tour.
President Trump is scheduled to meet with China's President Xi on Thursday at the annual summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, hosted by Malaysia.
The TikTok announcement comes a month after President Trump signed an executive order allowing TikTok to fall under American ownership and continue operating in the U.S. — essentially saying the deal satisfies a law that requires ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, to divest from the popular video-sharing app.
Lawmakers passed the bipartisan measure, citing concerns that the Chinese government could compel the company to hand over U.S. user data or manipulate TikTok’s algorithm to influence public opinion.
The new deal is expected to create a new joint venture to run TikTok, partly owned by U.S. investors and its parent company, ByteDance, which could hold no more than a 20% stake.
The White House says the new joint venture would be run by a U.S.-based board of directors with national security and cybersecurity credentials.
The 80% stake in TikTok would be controlled by American companies, with the U.S. government taking no direct stake in the venture.
Some of those American companies include private equity firm Silver Lake, venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and tech giant Oracle.
The White House confirmed that Oracle would serve as the new venture’s main security provider.
“It's going to provide top-to-bottom security throughout the company, including how the app fits in your phone and interacts with the phone, how it's upgraded, how American data is stored here in the United States on Oracle systems, and how the content recommendation algorithm works,” according to a Senior White House Official.
The official went on to say that the deal would provide a copy of TikTok's content recommendation algorithm to be “fully inspected and retrained by the security provider on U.S. user data” and then “operated by that U.S. community and continuously monitored as it operates.”
A final valuation for the proposal has also not been revealed, but the Trump administration estimates that the app could generate billions of dollars in economic activity over the next five years. According to a report conducted by ByteDance, TikTok added more than $24 billion to the U.S. economy in 2024.
TikTok has more than 170 million U.S. users, many of whom rely on the app for business and entertainment.
