President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to sell TikTok’s U.S. operations to American and global investors.
As reported by Reuters, the order requires bidders to meet national security rules under the 2024 law that would otherwise ban the app unless its Chinese owners divest.
Vice President James Vance said at the Oval Office, “The newly created U.S. entity would be valued around $14 billion. We actually think this is a good deal for investors, but they will make a determination about what they want to invest and what they think is the proper value.”
The White House extended the enforcement deadline to January 20 to allow time for the transaction and talks with Beijing. Vance admitted there was pushback from China but stressed, “The fundamental thing that we wanted to accomplish is that we wanted to keep TikTok operating, but we also wanted to make sure that we protected Americans’ data privacy as required by law.”
The order says TikTok’s algorithm will be retrained, monitored by U.S. security partners, and run by the new joint venture. Trump said he had spoken with President Xi Jinping: “We had a good talk, I told him what we were doing, and he said go ahead with it.”
Trump, who has 15 million TikTok followers, credited the platform with helping him win reelection. “This is going to be American-operated all the way,” he said, naming Michael Dell, Rupert Murdoch, and “probably four or five absolutely world-class investors” as part of the deal.
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