TikTok Sale Grows Closer as Trump Signs Executive Order Legalizing It
U.S. President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that outlines how the China-based Bytedance divestiture from TikTok in the United States will play out, laying the groundwork for the app to be majority-owned by U.S. persons and leaving Bytedance with a minority stake. This move only applies to the U.S.-based version of the app.
The Executive Order, titled “Saving TikTok While Protecting National Security,” appears to be the president’s way of formalizing actions that were already outlined by the bill that was signed into law by President Joe Biden last year. That bill, which passed both houses of Congress with bipartisan support, gave ByteDance up to 12 months to divest TikTok before the app faced a ban in the U.S. across app stores and web hosting services, stemming from a nine-month deadline with a possible three-month extension “if a sale is in progress.” That was in April of 2024, but now-President Trump has extended that initial date range multiple times, leading to the current state of affairs.
As reported by The Verge, President Trump says he spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping, who supposedly told him to “go ahead with it,” referring to the sale of the popular social media app. Trump said that a deal with TikTok had been reached nearly two weeks ago, but formal statements from China have thus far been noncommittal. Still, even if the Chinese President prefers to let the U.S. speak for both parties, it would not change the outcome, which appears to be a ByteDance divestiture.
It had been known that Trump planned to sign today’s Executive Order to formalize the deal since earlier this week, although that today’s signature doesn’t actually make the deal happen. The group of U.S. investors — which is reported to be Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX (the latter, which is based in Abu Dhabi) — would then control the keys to TikTok’s algorithm in the U.S.
“If I could make it 100 percent MAGA, I would. But it’s not going to work out that way, unfortunately.” Trump said today when asked if the algorithm would lean to promote his political leanings. “Every group, every philosophy, every policy will be treated fairly.”
Despite framing this situation as “saving” the social media app, banning TikTok was originally Donald Trump’s idea back in 2020.
Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.
