US president Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday declaring that his plan to sell TikTok’s United States operations to US and global investors will address the national security requirements in a 2024 law.
The new US company will be valued at about $14 billion (€12 billion), said vice-president JD Vance, putting a price tag on the popular short video app for the first time. Trump has delayed enforcement of the law that bans the app unless its Chinese owners sell it until December 16th amid efforts to extract TikTok’s US assets from the global platform, line up American and other investors and win approval from the Chinese government.
“There was some resistance on the Chinese side, but 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,” said Mr Vance at an Oval Office briefing.
Mr Trump said, referring to Chinese president Xi Jinping: “I spoke with President Xi. We had a good talk, I told him what we were doing, and he said go ahead with it.”
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The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. TikTok did not immediately comment on Mr Trump’s action.
Mr Trump has credited TikTok, which has 170 million US users, with helping him win re-election last year and has 15 million followers on his personal account. The White House also launched an official TikTok account last month.
“This is going to be American-operated all the way,” said Mr Trump.
He added that Michael Dell, Rupert Murdoch and “probably four or five absolutely world-class investors” would be part of the deal.
The White House did not disclose how it arrived at the $14 billion valuation. TikTok’s Chinese parent, ByteDance, values itself at $330 billion.
Republican House politicians said they want to see more details of the deal to ensure it represents a clean break with China.
“As the details are finalised, we must ensure this deal protects American users from the influence and surveillance of CCP-aligned groups,” said US representatives Brett Guthrie, Gus Bilirakis and Richard Hudson. – Reuters
