Trump suggests China approved deal to bring TikTok under U.S. ownership

President Trump delayed TikTok's sell-or-ban date for a fourth time this week.

By Emma Keates  |  September 19, 2025 | 1:28pm
Photo: Photo by Anna Barclay/Getty Images
News News TikTok
Trump suggests China approved deal to bring TikTok under U.S. ownership

President Trump’s long-gestating TikTok deal may actually be entering its final stages. In a Truth Social post on Friday, Trump wrote that he had “just completed a very productive call with President Xi of China,” where the two leaders “made progress on many very important issues including Trade, Fentanyl, the need to bring the War between Russia and Ukraine to an end, and the approval of the TikTok Deal.” He continued: “The call was a very good one, we will be speaking again by phone, appreciate the TikTok approval, and both look forward to meeting at APEC!” Trump did not provide any further detail on what that approval entailed. Chinese media was similarly vague. “The Chinese government… is pleased to see businesses conduct commercial negotiations based on market rules to reach a solution that complies with Chinese law and regulations while balancing the interests of all parties,” Xi was quoted as saying by China’s Xinhua News Agency (via The Wall Street Journal). 

The deal in question would see TikTok’s U.S. business run by a consortium of billionaire investors including Oracle, Silver Lake, and Andreessen Horowitz. Those names might sound familiar if you’ve been following the headlines this year. Oracle is owned by Larry Ellison, Trump advisor and father of David Ellison, whose company Skydance just merged with Paramount (and may be coming for Warner Bros. next). Andreessen Horowitz is similarly owned by Trump donor and DEI hater Marc Andreessen. If the original terms of the deal are approved, this consortium would hold a roughly 80% stake in the company, with Chinese shareholders retaining the rest. The change would be felt for everyday users as well. According to The Wall Street Journal, existing TikTok users would shift to a new app, which is currently undergoing testing. TikTok’s engineers will reportedly rebuild the content-recommendation algorithms that have brought the platform so much success, using technology licensed from parent company ByteDance.

Trump has now punted TikTok’s sell-or-ban date four separate times (the most recent being this week), as the U.S. and China continue to negotiate the terms of this deal. The sell-or-ban ruling initially stemmed from National Security concerns related to Byte Dance’s ties to the Chinese government. Now, the app seems primed to become yet another social platform owned by billionaires with close ties to this government. 

 
Join the discussion...