US, China set to 'consummate' TikTok sale on Oct 30, says Treasury Secretary Bessent
"All the details are ironed out, and that will be for the two leaders to consummate that transaction on Thursday in Korea," said US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
This photograph taken on Apr 19, 2024, shows a man holding a smartphone displaying the logo of Chinese social media platform Tiktok in an office in Paris. (Photo: AFP/Antonin Utz)
WASHINGTON: US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Sunday (Oct 26) that Washington and Beijing have thrashed out a "final deal" over the transfer of the US version of social media app TikTok to new owners, just days before a summit between Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping.
"All the details are ironed out, and that will be for the two leaders to consummate that transaction on Thursday in Korea," Bessent told CBS's Face the Nation programme.
"My remit was to get the Chinese to agree to approve the transaction, and I believe we successfully accomplished that over the past two days."
Citing national security concerns, Washington has sought to wrest TikTok's US operations from the hands of Chinese parent company ByteDance.
Last month, Trump signed an executive order that would place control in the hands of a group of US investors, many of them close allies of the president.
He said that Michael Dell, the founder, chairman and CEO of Dell Technologies; Rupert Murdoch, the chairman emeritus of Fox News owner Fox Corp and newspaper publisher News Corp, and "probably four or five absolutely world-class investors" would be part of the deal.
If the deal is finalised, US companies would control over 80 per cent of TikTok. Tech giant Oracle and investment firms Andreessen Horowitz and Silver Lake Technology Management are expected to be added to the list of American owners.
Trump's order said the algorithm will be retrained and monitored by the US company's security partners, and operation of the algorithm will be under the control of the new joint venture.
The new US company will be valued at around US$14 billion, Vice President JD Vance said, putting a price tag on the popular short video app far below some analyst estimates.
Trump has credited TikTok, which has 170 million US users, with helping him win reelection last year. Trump has 15 million followers on his personal TikTok account, while the White House also launched an official TikTok account in August.
Bessent on Sunday also signalled a tentative deal with China to de-escalate their trade war, with the US threat of a 100 per cent tariff hike on Chinese goods effectively taken off the table in exchange for Beijing deferring curbs on its global rare earth exports.
