{"id":1319,"date":"2025-10-29T15:06:20","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T16:06:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.agencywebdesigners.com\/?p=1319"},"modified":"2025-10-30T14:23:56","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T14:23:56","slug":"white-house-says-deal-to-put-tiktok-under-us-ownership-could-be-finalized-in-south-korea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.agencywebdesigners.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/29\/white-house-says-deal-to-put-tiktok-under-us-ownership-could-be-finalized-in-south-korea\/","title":{"rendered":"White House says deal to put TikTok under US ownership could be finalized in South Korea"},"content":{"rendered":"

By BARBARA ORTUTAY, AP Technology Writer<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Trump administration has been signaling that it may have finally reached a deal with China to keep TikTok running in the U.S., with the two countries finalizing it as soon as Thursday.<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump is visiting South Korea, where he will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping<\/a> to try to de-escalate a trade war.<\/p>\n

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CBS\u2019s \u201cFace the Nation\u201d<\/a> Sunday that the two leaders will \u201cconsummate that transaction on Thursday in Korea.\u201d<\/p>\n

If it happens, the deal would mark the end of months of uncertainty about the fate of the popular video-sharing platform in the United States. After wide bipartisan majorities in Congress passed \u2014 and President Joe Biden signed \u2014 a law that would ban TikTok in the U.S.<\/a> if it did not find a new owner in the place of China\u2019s ByteDance, the platform was set to go dark on the law\u2019s January deadline. For a several hours, it did. But on his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order to keep it running<\/a> while his administration tries to reach an agreement for the sale of the company.<\/p>\n

Three more executive orders followed, as Trump, without a clear legal basis, continued to extend the deadline for a TikTok deal. The second was in April<\/a>, when White House officials believed they were nearing a deal to spin off TikTok into a new company with U.S. ownership that fell apart after China backed out following Trump\u2019s tariff announcement. The third came in June<\/a>, then another in September, which Trump said would allow TikTok to continue operating in the United States in a way that meets national security concerns.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s order was meant to enable an American-led group of investors to buy the app from China\u2019s ByteDance, though the deal also requires China\u2019s approval.<\/p>\n

However, TikTok deal is \u201cnot really a big thing for Xi Jinping,\u201d said Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the German Marshall Fund\u2019s Indo-Pacific program, during a media briefing Tuesday. \u201c(China is) happy to let (Trump) declare that they have finally kept a deal. Whether or not that deal will protect the data of Americans is a big question going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA big question mark for the United States, of course, is whether this is consistent with U.S. law since there was a law passed by Congress,\u201d Glaser said.<\/p>\n

About 43% of U.S. adults under the age of 30 say they regularly get news from TikTok, higher than any other social media app, including YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, according to a Pew Research Center report published in September.<\/a><\/p>\n

Americans are also more closely divided on what to do about TikTok than they were two years ago.<\/p>\n

A recent Pew Research Center survey<\/a> found that about one-third of Americans said they supported a TikTok ban, down from 50% in March 2023. Roughly one-third said they would oppose a ban, and a similar percentage said they weren\u2019t sure.<\/p>\n

Among those who said they supported banning the social media platform, about 8 in 10 cited concerns over users\u2019 data security being at risk as a major factor in their decision, according to the report.<\/p>\n