President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday paving the way for a TikTok deal that could transfer majority ownership of the app to Americans.
While it appears the terms of the agreement are set, it will likely take some more time for the sides to close the deal as they hammer out finer legal and financial points.
“This is going to be American operated all the way,” Trump said during the signing on Thursday. “I have great respect for President Xi, and I very much appreciate that he approved the deal, because to get it done properly, we really needed the support of China and the approval of China.”
It’s not clear who all parties of the deal are, but Trump said during the signing that Oracle and its co-founder Larry Ellison will play a “big” role. He added that tech entrepreneur Michael Dell and media mogul Rupert Murdoch will also be involved, but Vice President JD Vance said more information will be revealed in the coming weeks.
Trump told reporters last week that the investors are “all very well-known people, very famous people actually, financially.”
The deal will also allow for the U.S. to control the app’s algorithm, which curates the type of content users see in their feeds, Vice President JD Vance said.
When asked whether he wants to see the new algorithm suggest more MAGA content, Trump told reporters that, “I always like MAGA-related.”
“If I could make it 100% MAGA, I would, but it’s not going to work out that way,” Trump said. “Unfortunately, no, everyone’s going to be treated fairly. Every group, every philosophy, every policy will be treated very fairly.”
The deal is the culmination of a years-long effort to address security vulnerabilities that critics say the social media platform, which is estimated to have around 170 million active users in the U.S., has because of its Chinese ownership.
The app’s future had been in limbo ever since former President Joe Biden signed a bipartisan bill last year that required TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance, to sell the platform to an American company or face a ban, citing national security concerns. The law, which was also upheld by the Supreme Court, was supposed to take effect on Jan. 19 this year.
But aside from the app briefly going dark in the hours before Trump’s second inauguration, TikTok has continued to operate in the U.S. as Trump used executive orders to repeatedly delay the ban. Earlier this month, the president extended TikTok’s shutdown deadline for a fourth time, giving it until Dec. 16 to complete the framework of a long-awaited deal between Washington and Beijing.
In past years, efforts to ban TikTok had come from both sides of the political aisle. U.S. officials expressed concern over the potential for Bytedance to share user data with the Chinese government, as well as the possibility of China using the platform’s algorithm to manipulate public opinion.
But by the time the ban was slated to finally kick in, many of those same lawmakers had changed their tune in the wake of popular discontent over the looming loss of the app. In January, the Biden White House stated that it would pass the responsibility for enforcing the ban to Trump’s incoming administration, and congressional leaders who had once championed the ban seemed to shy away from enforcement as well.
Trump himself has also flip-flopped on his attitude toward TikTok. During his first term in 2020, he signed an executive order to effectively ban the app. (The order was later halted in court.) By 2024, however, he openly voiced his opposition to a TikTok ban and joined the platform himself in an attempt to reach young voters, even publishing a video promising to “save TikTok” as part of his presidential campaign.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
