A White House official announced on Monday that President Donald Trump will sign an executive order later this week, declaring that the deal to divest TikTok’s U.S. operations from its Chinese owner, ByteDance, meets the requirements set by a 2024 law.
The official told reporters on a conference call that the United States is confident that China has approved the deal and does not plan to hold further talks with Beijing about its details. However, they added that additional paperwork is required from both sides to finalize the agreement.
Trump is working to prevent the short-video app, which has 170 million U.S. users, from being banned after Congress passed a law ordering its shutdown by January 2025 if its U.S. assets were not sold by ByteDance. Trump has delayed the enforcement of the law until mid-December as efforts continue to separate TikTok’s U.S. assets from the global platform, secure American investors, and ensure the new ownership qualifies as the full divestiture required by the 2024 law.
Last week’s progress toward a TikTok deal marked a rare breakthrough in months-long talks between the world’s two largest economies, which have been trying to defuse a wide-ranging trade war that has unsettled global markets.
