- Congress has ordered Tiktok closed to American users.
- Tiktok Deal to transfer the platform’s assets to US owners.
- US TIKTOK to still make use of Bytedance’s algorithm: sources
Washington: President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping will apply for a deal on Friday to help keep the Tiktok video app online and ease tensions between two superpowers locked in a standoff over trading.
The agreement is at the top of the agenda, along with the trade for the leaders’ first known invitation of three months, expected Friday morning, US officials said. However, China has not confirmed plans for the call.
Trump and XI’s efforts to stabilize the connections come as the two governments have discussed a potentially personal summit between XI and Trump during the Asia-Stophava (APEC) summit in South Korea from October 30 to November 1, November Reuters have reported.
Pekings unsubscribe is one of the obstacles Trump needed to clear to keep Tiktok open. The Congress had ordered the app closed to US users in January 2025 if its US assets were not sold by Chinese owner bytance.
Trump has refused to enforce the law while his administration is looking after a new owner, but also because he worries a ban on the app would anger Tikkok’s huge user base and interfere with political communication.
“I like Tiktok; it helped me to get me chosen,” Trump said during a press conference on Thursday. “Tiktok has a huge value. The US has that value in its hand because we are the ones who have to approve it.”
The most important questions about the agreement are left. It is not clear that the company’s exact ownership structure, how much control China will preserve or whether Congress will approve.
The trade would transfer Tiktok’s US assets to US owners from byteDance, Reuters reported. Sources who are familiar with the deal said that US Tiktok would still make use of Bytedance’s algorithm.
This scheme worries legislators concerned that Beijing could spy on Americans or perform an impact on operations through the app. China has said there is no evidence of a national security threat that the app is.
Complicated relationships
Trump has placed his foreign policy approach as a peace seeker and deal-making. The relationship remains ice between the world’s two largest economies.
“We are pretty close to an agreement,” Trump said on Thursday in a seemingly referral to major trade negotiations. “We may be able to make an expansion with China, but it is an extension based on the same expressions we have right now, which are pretty good expressions.”
Other key questions include competition between both sides on semiconductors and other advanced technologies. The United States wants more Chinese purchases of US harvested soybeans and Boeing aircraft.
The United States also requires China to crack down on the export of fentanyl -related chemicals, a major cause of us overdose of death. Beijing has accused Washington of distorting the question.
Recent data points to slower economies in both China and the United States.
Since Embedet again in January, Trump was sharply migrating tariffs everywhere, appointing China’s export -oriented economy with particularly punitive rates. It caused China to answer in nature. Tariff prices on both sides of the Pacific rose to triple-digit percentages in April.
A number of limited agreements since May held the pause tit-for-the-duty war between the countries.
They also dismissed problems that led China to suffocate rare earth magnets that Washington needs to make high -tech gadgets. Trump had blocked Peking’s access to Semiconductor Design software, jet engines and some chemicals.
“China’s effective use of sticks (rare earths) and carrots (Tiktok) have turned things down strongly to their advantage,” said Scott Kennedy, head of the Chinese business and finance program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank.
Tariffs, a tax on US importers, has been an important plank for Trump’s economic policy. He has raised them to the highest levels in nearly a century.
The Republican president has portrayed tariffs as an elixir that can recover lost production tasks, cut chronic federal government deficits, correctly perceived trade imbalances and bend foreign countries to Washington’s will.
Despite the customs, China is still the US third largest trading partner and the source of its largest bilateral trade deficit in goods.
Trump has threatened but so far withheld punitive tariffs against Chinese exports related to the country’s purchase of Russian oil.
At the same time, regional concerns are multiplied on Taiwan and the South China Sea, risky flashpoints struggling to command so much attention in Washington as Russia-Ukraine and Gaza Wars.
“The heads of diplomacy play an irreplaceable role in providing strategic guidance for China -US relations,” said Liu Pengyu, spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington.
In an early sign of goodwill prior to the call, China allowed China to depart Wells Fargo Banks Chenyue Mao, who had been prevented from returning to the United States for months.
