US reaches framework deal with China on TikTok ownership
By Al Jazeera, September 15, 2025The US Treasury Secretary has said Washington has reached a framework deal with China on the ownership of TikTok’s American operations.
Scott Bessent said the framework was set in trade talks in Madrid to pave the way for US ownership. He added that US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping would “complete” the deal on Friday, September 19, 2025. China has not commented.
Trump said on Truth Social that talks in Madrid had “gone very well”, with a deal reached “on a certain company that young people in our country very much wanted to save”.
A deadline is looming for the Chinese owner of TikTok to find a buyer for its American operations or face a ban in the US.
In January 2025, the US Supreme Court upheld a law passed in April 2024, banning the video-sharing app unless its parent company, ByteDance, sold its US division.
The US Justice Department has said that TikTok’s access to data on American users poses “a national-security threat of immense depth and scale”.
ByteDance has repeatedly insisted that its US operations are fully independent and that no data has been shared with the Chinese government. The company argued that the ban would violate free speech protections for its 170 million US users.
TikTok went dark for a day in January after the law came into effect, before Trump intervened and issued a 75-day postponement.
The deadline for a Sale has since been extended three times, and the latest delay to the ban is due to end on Wednesday, September 17, 2025.
Various figures have previously been touted as potential buyers of the platform, including Tesla owner Elon Musk, YouTube creator MrBeast and billionaire investor Frank McCourt.
Bessent announced the “framework” deal on the second day of trade talks between the US and China aimed at ending a trade war between the world’s two biggest economies.
“China has a strong control, and even grip, over Russia, and these powerful Tariffs will break that grip,” the US President said on his Truth Social platform.
Trump once supported a ban, but changed his position in part because of the role he believes it played in his second election victory: “I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok because I won youth by 34 points”, he said.