WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday declaring that his plan to sell Chinese-owned TikTok’s US operations to US and global investors will address the national security requirements in a 2024 law.
The new US company will be valued at around US$14 billion, Vice President JD Vance said, putting a price tag on the popular short video app far below some analyst estimates.
Trump on Thursday delayed until January 20 enforcement of the law that bans the app unless its Chinese owners sell it amid efforts to extract TikTok’s US assets from the global platform, line up American and other investors and win approval from the Chinese Government.
The publication of the executive order shows Trump is making progress on the sale of TikTok’s U.S. assets, but numerous details need to be fleshed out, including how the US entity would use TikTok’s most important asset, its recommendation algorithm.
“There was some resistance on the Chinese side, but the fundamental thing that we wanted to accomplish is that we wanted to keep TikTok operating, but we also wanted to make sure that we protected Americans’ data privacy as required by law,” Vance told reporters at an Oval Office briefing.
Trump’s order says the algorithm will be retrained and monitored by the US company’s security partners and operation of the algorithm will be under the control of the new joint venture.
Trump said Chinese President Xi Jinping had indicated approval of the plans. “I spoke with President Xi,” Trump said. “We had a good talk, I told him what we were doing and he said go ahead with it.”
China’s Foreign Ministry on Friday reiterated that the government ‘respects the will of enterprises and welcomes them to conduct business negotiations on the basis of market rules to reach solutions that comply with Chinese laws and regulations and achieve a balance of interests.
“We hope the US will provide an open, fair and non-discriminatory business environment for Chinese companies investing in the United States,” Ministry Spokesperson Guo Jiakun told a press conference, without giving further details of the deal.
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