President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping have started a high-stakes phone call to discuss a framework for an agreement to transfer TikTok’s American operations to a U.S. ownership group and avoid a ban on the app, which is currently banned under a 2024 law that Trump has thus far declined to enforce.
According to a White House official, the phone call began at 8:00 am ET. The official did not say whether the phone call was still ongoing as of 9:22 am and stressed that Trump would share further information on his Truth Social platform following the call.
The fate of the popular video sharing app has been in limbo since January, when a law banning it that had been passed by bipartisan majorities in Congress and signed by then-president Joe Biden went into effect.
The legislation was prompted by the longstanding national security concerns posed by Chinese ownership of a platform used regularly by more than 170 million Americans. But Trump has declined to enforce it and first signed an order purporting to waive enforcement of the law shortly after taking office.
Earlier this week he issued another directing the Department of Justice to continue putting off enforcement of the ban until December, just after American and Chinese negotiators agreed on a framework for a deal to place TikTok’s American operations under the control of a U.S. consortium that would reportedly own 80 percent of a new company to operate the app.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Americans using TikTok would move to a new app built with a new version of the Chinese-made recommendation algorithm that was the source of concerns which led to the law banning the app in the United States.
Wang Jingtao, deputy director of China’s top cyberspace regulator, told reporters in Madrid that the two sides had “reached a basic consensus on resolving the TikTok issue.”
He added that Beijing had agreed to “licensing the use of TikTok’s algorithm and other intellectual property rights” and said negotiators had reached an accord on “entrusting the operations of U.S. user data and content security business.”
The agreement would also see TikTok’s American operations be purchased from Chinese owner ByteDance by a group of U.S. investors including Oracle, which is controlled by Larry Ellison, the GOP donor and father of right-wing media entrepreneur David Ellison.
The younger Ellison recently took control of CBS News and is intent on turning the television network’s journalism operation onto a more pro-Trump course. He is also reportedly considering a bid for the parent company of CNN, which if successful would allow him to neuter two widely-respected news outlets that have long been a thorn in Trump’s side.
The president’s permissive attitude towards TikTok marks a staunch reversal from his position during his first term when it gained popularity during the Covid-19 pandemic.
At the time, he signed an executive order which threatened to shut down TikTok if the app’s Chinese owners, ByteDance, did not divest its American operations. At the time, Trump and others in his first-term administration described the application as a national security threat, citing its’ opaque algorithm and the potential for China to use the application to spy on Americans through their mobile phones.
But Trump’s attitude towards TikTok shifted after his 2024 presidential campaign used it to reach younger voters during last year’s election.
Speaking alongside British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer at a joint press conference on Thursday, Trump said he would speak with Xi about the proposed deal to save TikTok because there is tremendous value” in the controversial application.
