[WASHINGTON] US President Donald Trump will sign an executive order later this week that declares that a deal to divest TikTok’s US operations from its Chinese owner Bytedance will meet requirements set out in a 2024 law, a White House official said on Monday (Sep 22).
The US is confident that China has approved the deal and does not plan further talks with Beijing about its details, the official told reporters on a conference call, but added that additional paperwork is required from both sides to approve the deal.
Trump is trying to keep the short video app with 170 million US users from being banned after Congress passed a law that ordered it shut down by January 2025 if its US assets were not sold by owner ByteDance.
Trump has delayed enforcement of the law through mid-December 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.
Last week’s progress towards a deal on TikTok marked a rare breakthrough in months-long talks between the world’s two biggest economies that have sought to defuse a wide-ranging trade war that has unnerved global markets. REUTERS
