President Donald Trump is set to sign an executive order on Thursday, declaring that the deal being negotiated for the sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations will meet the requirements of a 2024 law. This information comes from a White House source familiar with the matter.
Earlier this week, the White House had stated that Trump would confirm that a deal to divest TikTok’s U.S. operations from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, would comply with the law passed by Congress. This law bans the short-video app unless its Chinese ownership is ended due to national security concerns.
Trump has publicly credited TikTok, which has 170 million U.S. users, with helping him win re-election last year. He also has 15 million followers on his personal account, and the White House launched an official TikTok account last month.
Trump has delayed the enforcement of the law until mid-December to allow for the separation of TikTok’s U.S. assets from its global platform, secure American investors, and ensure that the new ownership qualifies as a complete divestiture as required by the 2024 law. The law, passed under the Biden administration, was driven by fears that the Chinese government could access U.S. user data.
A further extension of this deadline is expected to be included in the executive order on Thursday. Last week, the U.S. president had indicated that business leaders Lachlan Murdoch, Larry Ellison, and Michael Dell would be involved as U.S. investors in a proposed deal to keep TikTok operating in the country. Trump had previously mentioned that the U.S. and China had made progress on an agreement to transfer TikTok’s American assets from China’s ByteDance to U.S. owners.
