MADRID – Senior U.S. and Chinese officials have agreed on a “framework” to enable the continued use of TikTok in the United States, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday, adding that the process to keep the popular app alive is expected to be finalized later this week by the presidents of the two countries.
Following high-level talks in Madrid, Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer declined to provide the specifics, including which company is set to buy the U.S. version of the short-form video-sharing app, owned by a Chinese company.
Trump said on social media that the high-level talks had gone very well and he will speak to Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday.
“A deal was also reached on a ‘certain’ company that young people in our Country very much wanted to save,” Trump added. “They will be very happy!”
The U.S. announcement came two days before a deadline requiring TikTok’s Chinese owner ByteDance Ltd. to sell the app or face a federal ban, and as the two countries are exploring an in-person meeting between Trump and Xi by the end of the year.
“We’re not going to talk about the commercial terms of the deal. It’s between two private parties, but the commercial terms have been agreed upon,” Bessent, who headed the U.S. delegation, told reporters.
He added that Trump and Xi will “complete the deal” when they speak on Friday.
The TikTok ban, endorsed by President Joe Biden while in office, was supposed to have taken effect in January, but Trump has pushed back the deadline three times since taking office the same month, offering more time for the Chinese company to find a Washinton-approved buyer.
Trump has said activity on TikTok, which has some 170 million American users, helped contribute to his win in the 2024 presidential election. Last month, the White House launched an official TikTok account, with the future status of the app still up in the air.
Trump had to decide by Wednesday whether TikTok would face a nationwide ban on national security grounds.
Heightened U.S.-China tensions due to a trade war launched by Trump eased in May, when the two sides convened an opening round of high-level talks in Geneva.
The first talks led the United States and China to back away from the triple-digit tariff rates they had each imposed on the other’s imports, and a truce in the battle of tit-for-tat measures has since been in place.
After their meeting in late July in Stockholm, they extended the 90-day tariff truce until Nov. 10.
The latest talks in the Spanish capital marked their fourth round of discussions in as many months, with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, a trusted aide to Xi, leading Beijing’s negotiating team each time.
In addition to the status of TikTok, the senior officials discussed a range of other issues, including those concerning trade and national security, according to the two countries.
Li Chenggang, China’s international trade representative and a member of the team, said at a press conference that the two sides held “candid, in-depth and constructive” discussions over two days through Monday.
On the TikTok issue, Li stressed that China has always been against the “politicization, instrumentalization and weaponization of technology” and will never seek any deal at the expense of international fairness or the interests of companies.
