President Donald Trump on Monday suggested that a deal has been reached with China to keep TikTok up and running in the United States.
“The big Trade Meeting in Europe between The United States of America, and China, has gone VERY WELL! It will be concluding shortly,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “A deal was also reached on a ‘certain’ company that young people in our Country very much wanted to save. They will be very happy!”
Trump said that he will be speaking with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday, noting that their relationship “remains a very strong one.”
The president’s social media post comes after U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent met with Chinese officials in Spain for trade talks, during which they discussed the app’s future. Following the meeting, Bessent said the “framework” for a deal had been met, but further details would be decided during Friday’s meeting.
While the U.S. and China have agreed on a basic framework, the Chinese government will review and approve matters related to the app’s technology exports and licensing of intellectual property rights, an official from China’s cyberspace regulator told Reuters on Monday after the talks.
China will not reach a deal with the U.S. at the expense of its own principles, and will follow what is best for the Beijing-based company ByteDance, which owns TikTok, the country’s top trade negotiator Li Chenggang said.
Meanwhile, some U.S. leaders have expressed concern over TikTok due to national security concerns and the possibility that the app could be sharing private American data with the Chinese government.
Congress passed a bill last year, which was signed into law by then-President Joe Biden, giving ByteDance nine months to sell TikTok to a U.S.-approved company, or otherwise face a nationwide ban.
Uncertainty over the app’s status in the U.S. prompted the app to go dark for a single day in January, though the outage lasted less than 24 hours. Since coming back online, Trump has delayed enforcing the law three times.
After repeatedly extending the deadline for TikTok to sell or be banned, the most recent deadline given by Trump was this Wednesday, September 17.
Trump initially proposed banning the app during his first term as President, but the policy didn’t become law until Biden took office. After Biden banned the app, Trump changed his mind, and later vowed to save it for U.S. users.
Monday’s meeting with China comes as trade discussions between the world’s two largest economies have dragged on for months. Previous meetings held in Geneva, London and Stockholm to discuss tariffs and market access have not yielded any deals.
However, the two sides have agreed to prolong a truce on tariffs exceeding 100 percent until November, giving negotiators more time to address disputes over what the U.S. has called “unfair trade practices” and security concerns linked to technology firms.
Reaching a deal with China remains unfinished business for Trump, who has upended the global trading system by slapping double-digit tariffs on nearly every U.S. trade partner.
