Trump to sign deal for US TikTok investors, including Fox’s Murdoch
President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order on Thursday that will facilitate the sale of TikTok, according to multiple reports. That deal will meet the requirements of a 2024 law to keep TikTok operating in the U.S.
TikTok deal
The expected sale will see Chinese company ByteDance sell around 80% of TikTok to a group of American investors. That group is led by Larry Ellison and his company, Oracle.
Under this deal, the algorithm behind TikTok will be copied and retrained to run solely on the data of its U.S. user base.
Oracle, one of the world’s largest cloud computing firms, will host the data of 170 million U.S. users. They will also provide “top to bottom security,” according to a senior White House official who spoke to CBS News.
“It’s going to be continuously monitored as it operates to ensure that it’s behaving appropriately, right, that it’s not being used for any kind of malicious purpose, and that it’s not being unduly influenced,” the official said to CBS News.
Other investors reportedly involved in the deal include Rupert Murdoch and his son, Lachlan, as well as Michael Dell, CEO of Dell Technologies.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt also said this deal would create a board to oversee TikTok with six seats reserved for American investors.
Necessary sale
This sale follows a law signed by then-President Joe Biden, which required ByteDance to sell TikTok in the U.S. or face a ban from app stores in the country. Lawmakers had shared national security concerns over the Chinese-owned app.
Some lawmakers continue to voice those concerns as details of this deal were revealed.
“Based on initial reports, I am concerned the reported licensing deal may involve ongoing reliance by the new TikTok on a ByteDance algorithm and application that could allow continued CCP control or influence,” Michigan Republican Rep. John Moolenaar, chairman of the House China Committee, said in a statement.
The law says there can be no operational relationship between ByteDance and any new owner.
Upon taking office in January, Trump immediately signed an executive order to delay that law and keep TikTok operating in the U.S. until a deal was reached.
The president would go on to sign two more executive orders in April and June to continue to delay a TikTok shutdown.
The latest executive order on the sale of the app will once again delay that law from going into effect as the deal goes through.
China’s reaction
Chinese officials have remained relatively quiet on the deal but confirmed a “basic consensus” on a deal earlier this month.
They reportedly called the deal a win-win.
“China reached the relevant consensus with the United States on the TikTok issue because it is based on the principles of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation,” People’s Daily, the official paper of the Communist Party of China, said in a commentary.
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Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
