TikTok US ban threat finally comes to an end
After nearly five years of court battles and geopolitical wrangling, Beijing and the White House might finally be on the verge of ending a major tech standoff.
The US treasury secretary Scott Bessent announced on Sunday that China and the US have “finalised the details” of a deal that would relocate TikTok’s American operations to new U.S.-based owners.
If confirmed, the move could end years of uncertainty over the future of the viral short-form video app.
“We reached a final deal on TikTok”, Bessent told CBS’s Face The Nation. “As of today, all the details are ironed out, and that will be for the two leaders to consummate that transaction”, he added, ahead of Donald Trump’s meeting with Xi Jinping in South Korea on Thursday.
The $14bn (£10.49bn) deal would see a consortium of mostly US investors, like Oracle and Fox Corporation, take control of TikTok’s US assets.
The platform’s parent company, Chinese-owned ByteDance, would retain a stake of less than 20 per cent.
Trump’s executive order, signed just last month, grants the new board oversight of the app’s content moderation systems and algorithms, which has drawn national security concerns in Washington.
A wider concern
TikTok’s fate has become a proxy for a wider power struggle between the world’s two largest economies.
President Trump has repeatedly framed the app’s Chinese ownership as a national security threat, citing fears that its user data could be accessed by China, a claim that ByteDance has repeatedly denied.
The deal’s timing is also politically convenient, as Trump is touring Asia this week and will meet allies and adversaries alike.
In Malaysia, he hailed a “historic” ceasefire between Cambodia and Thailand, and is expected to announce further trade decisions with Japan’s next prime minister, Sanae Takaichi.
Trump’s team have said that finalising the app’s deal alongside wider trade discussions could mark a symbolic reset of US-China tensions.
The trade package under discussion would reportedly see the US delay steep new tariffs on Chinese imports, while Beijing, in turn, rolls back export controls on rare earth minerals.
A tangled history
TikTok’s political and legal battles stretch back to Trump’s first term.
In 2020, the president first threatened to ban the social media app outright, citing China’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Successive extensions followed ever since, including under President Biden, who signed the TikTok ban into law in 2024, but repeatedly delayed its reinforcement.
Now, after many missed deadlines and abandoned sales, this week’s expected signing could finally bring closure.
The US would gain control of the app’s servers and algorithms, while Chinese regulators would keep a minor financial interest.
The ongoing situation has been far from straightforward. A previous attempt at a sale to American investors collapsed back in 2021, after China refused export approval due to national security concerns.
Meanwhile, TikTok’s global base ballooned, as the firm’s revenue saw a 38 per cent year-on-year uptick to $6.3bn (£4.72bn), despite laying off hundreds of staff in London and elsewhere.
What does this mean for users and markets?
For the well-loved app’s 150m US users, little is likely to change, in the short term at least.
TikTok will continue to operate very similarly, despite its US data falling under domestic oversight for the first time.
But for investors, the deal could have wider significance, perhaps signalling a shift from US-China decoupling to managed coexistence.
Still, there are concerns that ownership alone won’t erase risk. While the “final deal” might remove the immediate threat of an American ban, it may not end the strategic tension between the two powers.