TikTok deal to be finalized Thursday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday that the TikTok deal announced last month is set to be finalized on Thursday when President Trump meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“We reached a final deal on TikTok. We reached one in Madrid, and I believe that as of today, all the details are ironed out, and that will be for the two leaders to consummate that transaction on Thursday in Korea,” Bessent said on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”
President Trump signed an executive order last month that paved the way for a deal to keep TikTok operating in the U.S. under a new corporate structure with American investors. But the details were not immediately clear. Asked about the details of the TikTok transaction Sunday, Bessent said he is “not part of the commercial side of the transaction.”
“My remit was to get the Chinese to agree to approve the transaction, and I believe we successfully accomplished that over the past two days,” he said
Bessent spoke from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where President Trump began a three-country visit to Asia. Mr. Trump is expected to meet with Xi at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea on Thursday.
Mr. Trump said last month that Chinese President Xi Jinping had signed off on the deal during a call. The deal represented a “qualified divestiture,” satisfying a law passed by Congress in April 2024 that required TikTok’s China-based parent company to divest or face a ban. The move also delayed enforcement of the bipartisan law by 120 days to allow for the agreement on the video sharing social media app’s operations in the U.S. to be finalized.
The White House outlined last month that the deal would establish a U.S.-based “joint venture” made up of a majority of U.S. investors and owners, along with a board of directors with a majority of Americans. ByteDance and its affiliates were set to own less than 20% of the new entity. The White House said a consortium of American investors, including Oracle, will have a stake in the new TikTok. (Oracle was cofounded by Larry Ellison, whose son David Ellison is the chairman and CEO of Paramount Skydance, which is the parent company of CBS. The Ellison family owns a controlling interest in Paramount Skydance.)
Republican Rep. John Moolenaar of Michigan, the chairman of the House China committee, also appeared Sunday on “Face the Nation.” Moolenaar, who previously expressed concern about the TikTok deal, said Sunday that said “as long as the Chinese are involved, I think there’s reason for distrust.”
When asked about ByteDance and its affiliates continuing to own up to 20% of the new entity, Moolenaar added, “I’m still concerned about it.”
“The Chinese report to the Chinese Communist Party, and they will leverage every advantage they get,” Moolenaar said. “But the president has set a goal of making this available to the American people, following the law that was passed in a bipartisan way, and I trust that they are doing that.”
