Trump signs order for TikTok sale deal to US investors
Jeff Mason |
President Donald Trump has signed an executive order declaring that his plan to sell TikTok’s US operations to US and global investors will meet the requirements in a 2024 law that says the short video app will be banned unless its Chinese owners sell it.
The new US company will be valued at around $US14 billion ($A21 billion), Vice President JD Vance said.
Trump has delayed enforcement of the law until December 16 amid efforts to extract TikTok’s US assets from the global platform, line up American and other investors and win approval from the Chinese government.
“There was some resistance on the Chinese side, but the fundamental thing that we wanted to accomplish is that we wanted to keep TikTok operating, but we also wanted to make sure that we protected Americans’ data privacy as required by law,” Vance said.
Trump said: “I spoke with President Xi. We had a good talk, I told him what we were doing, and he said go ahead with it.”
The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump has credited TikTok, which has 170 million US users, with helping him win re-election last year and has 15 million followers on his personal account. The White House also launched an official TikTok account last month.
“This is going to be American-operated all the way,” Trump said.
He added Rupert Murdoch, Dell founder Michael Dell and “probably four or five absolutely world-class investors” would be part of the deal.
Republican House politicians said they want to see more details of the deal to ensure it represents a clean break with China.
“As the details are finalised, we must ensure this deal protects American users from the influence and surveillance of CCP-aligned groups,” said US representatives Brett Guthrie, Gus Bilirakis and Richard Hudson.
Trump, during his first term, signed an executive order attempting to ban the app if it didn’t split off its US business, warning that TikTok’s “data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information.”
Beijing previously called the demand that TikTok be spun off from its Chinese parent company an act of “robbery,” but Chinese officials changed their tune as the US-China trade war progressed.
with AP
Reuters
