Trump Signs Executive Order for Investor Consortium to Purchase US TikTok

President Trump has signed an executive order to transfer ownership of TikTok’s US assets from the Chinese company ByteDance to a group of US investors. The sale is valued at $14 billion.

TikTok for sale:

• Two of the investors in the American consortium set to purchase TikTok are billionaires Larry Ellison of Oracle and Rupert Murdoch, Chairman Emeritus of NewsCorp.

• Last year, Congress signed a bill ordering ByteDance to sell TikTok’s American interests to an American entity.

• The basis of the order was that Chinese ownership presented security concerns for the US.

• With this sale, TikTok will be able to continue operating in the US, and the US will control the algorithm.

• President Trump postponed the sale several times throughout the year, citing negotiations with the Chinese interests.

• Upon signing this order, Mr. Trump said, “I spoke with President Xi. We had a good talk, I told him what we were doing, and he said go ahead with it.”

What they said:

• Vice President JD Vance: “There was some resistance on the Chinese side. But the fundamental thing that we wanted to accomplish is that we wanted to keep TikTok operating. But we also wanted to make sure that we protected Americans’ data privacy as required by law, both because it’s the right thing to do, but also because it’s a legal requirement of the law that was passed last year by Congress. So we think that we were able to do that.”