Trump and Xi Give Nod to TikTok Deal

Following the scheduled phone conversation between US President Trump and China President Xi on Friday 19 September 2025, it would appear that the TikTok deal can now go through, although not many details transpired. It would thus appear that the finer print still needs to be hashed out although the two leaders did gave the nod to go head with the deal.

The Chinese Ministry of Commerce later issued a bland communique which reiterated general principles of ‘fair trade’. On the other hand, US Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was more loquacious and revealed certain aspects of the deal under finalization. A consortium of American firms would own #TikTok in the USA, but the Chinese side will hold on to a 20% stake, giving the Chinese one seat on the Board of Directors. The TikTok servers would be housed in the data centers owned and managed by Oracle to ensure no sensitive data is transferred to China. Last but not least, the US will have access to the powerful #AI algorithm that processes and pushes video clips to TikTokers.

Changing his tune on TikTok, Trump even went so far as to highlight the central role that the social media app played during his electoral campaign. In particular, #TikTok allowed him an unprecedented outreach into the youth segment and the Republicans thus scored a historic high among young voters. Previously, there was broad bipartisan agreement in Congress which was firmly bent on banning TikTok due to ‘national security’ concerns.

No price tag has been made public at this stage, but ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok in China, seemed to indicate that the technology could be made available to the US under a ‘licensing model’. The green light from the top leadership follows the ‘framework agreement’, reached by the negotiation teams of both countries in Madrid, earlier in the week.