President Trump on Thursday signed an executive order that will allow the wildly popular social video app TikTok to continue operating in the United States.
TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, was forced to divest from the app's US operations or face a nationwide ban over concerns about the company's ties to China.
Congress passed legislation calls for the TikTok ban to take effect in January, but Trump has repeatedly signed orders that allowed TikTok to continue operating in the country.
Under the agreement, which Trump said was approved by Chinese President Xi Jinping, TikTok's U.S. operations will be run through a joint venture run by a group of American-majority investors. ByteDance and its subsidiaries will own less than 20% of the company.
About 170 million Americans use TikTok, known for its viral entertainment videos.
“These guarantees will protect the American people from misuse of their data and influence by a foreign adversary, and will allow the millions of American viewers, creators and businesses that rely on the TikTok app to continue to use it,” Trump said in his order.
Trump, who led the campaign to ban TikTok in the US years ago, said at a news conference that he believed the deal satisfied security concerns.
“The main reason is that it belongs to the Americans… and the people who love this country and are very smart Americans, so they don't want anything like that to happen,” Trump said.
Trump said Thursday that the people involved deal with These include Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell and media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Vice President J.D. Vance said the new entity overseeing TikTok's U.S. operations would be valued at about $14 billion.
Murdoch's involvement would likely involve investment from Fox Corp. into the deal, a source familiar with the situation who was not authorized to comment publicly told The Times. The Fox Corporation owns the Fox News channel, whose hosts openly support Trump.
The algorithms and code will be under the control of the joint venture. The order requires a US cloud computing company to hold sensitive user data in the US.
White House spokeswoman Caroline Leavitt told Fox News last Saturday that Oracle would be responsible for the app's data and privacy in the US.
Ellison is an ally of Trump, who is the second richest person in the world, according to Forbes.
TikTok is already working with Oracle. As of October 2022, “all new protected user data in the US is stored on Oracle's secure infrastructure rather than on TikTok or ByteDance servers,” TikTok says on its website.
Allison also application preparation for Warner Bros. Discovery, the media company that owns HBO, TNT and CNN, after completing its takeover of Paramount, one of the first Hollywood studios.
“The most important thing is it protects the security of Americans' data,” Vance said at Meet the Press on Thursday. “This deal ensures that an American enterprise and American investors will effectively control the algorithm. We do not want any foreign government to use it as a propaganda tool.”
TikTok, which has a large presence in Los Angeles, did not respond to a request for comment.
The terms of the deal are still unclear. Trump discussed the TikTok deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping in an extended call last week. Chinese and U.S. officials have until Dec. 16 to finalize the details.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
