China has officially approved the sale of TikTok, and a deal will move forward in the coming weeks and months, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced following President Donald Trump’s meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping this morning.
"In Kuala Lumpur, we finalised the TikTok agreement in terms of getting Chinese approval, and I would expect that would go forward in the coming weeks and months, and we'll finally see a resolution to that," Bessent told Fox Business Network.
The U.S. and Chinese governments first carved out a “framework for a TikTok deal” last month, days ahead of a thrice-extended, September 17 deadline for TikTok to sell to a U.S. owner and avoid a nationwide ban. While today’s meeting between President Trump and President Xi greenlighted the deal, no other details of the soon-to-be U.S. owner have been disclosed.
“China will work with the U.S. to properly resolve issues related to TikTok,” China’s Commerce Ministry said after today’s meeting. The platform hosts 170 million U.S. users, 7 million of whom use the app for business.
In January, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld a law banning TikTok from app stores nationwide if it did not divest from its Chinese owner, ByteDance, due to what both the Trump and Biden administrations called national security concerns. Days later, the app briefly shuttered shortly ahead of its scheduled ban, but was reinstated throughout multiple deadline extensions from the Trump administration.
