Order is part of president’s bid to prevent app from being banned in United States
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump is set to sign an executive order later this week that asserts that a sale of TikTok’s US operations to a new owner apart from Bytedance, its Chinese parent company, will satisfy conditions established in a 2024 law, a White House spokesman said on Monday.
The United States believes that China approved the agreement and is not going to have additional talks with Beijing regarding its terms, the official said on a conference call with reporters, but noted that further paperwork needs to come from both sides to sign off on the agreement.
Trump to sign order stating TikTok deal satisfies 2024 law conditions
Trump is attempting to prevent the short video app that has 170 million US users from being prohibited after Congress approved legislation that compelled it to be closed down by January 2025 if its US assets were not divested by its owner ByteDance.
Trump postponed enforcing the law until mid-December in an attempt to pull out TikTok’s US assets from the global app, arrange American investors and confirm that the new ownership is a full divestiture required under the 2024 law.
Last week’s advance toward a TikTok agreement was a welcome breakthrough in month-long negotiations between the world’s two largest economies that have tried to douse a broad trade war that has unsettled world markets.
