The Trump administration, however, has offered few specifics about the deal. And the Chinese government appeared less certain about the status of talks Friday, suggesting the president had agreed to support efforts to reach a “proper deal on TikTok.”
Here are the key questions that remain on the TikTok deal:
What role will ByteDance play?
The chief concern behind the push to ban TikTok in the U.S. was the app’s China-based parent company, ByteDance.
Lawmakers argued the platform, used by some 170 million Americans, posed a national security risk, potentially exposing U.S. user data to the Chinese government. They also expressed concerns that Beijing could manipulate users’ feeds in its interest.
Large bipartisan majorities ultimately voted in favor of a bill requiring ByteDance to divest from TikTok or face a ban on U.S. networks and app stores. It was signed into law by former President Biden in April 2024.
Under the law, ByteDance is barred from maintaining an operational relationship with TikTok in order for a divestiture to be approved.
Recent reporting has suggested the deal would spin TikTok off into a separate U.S. entity, majority owned by a group of American investors, including Oracle, Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz.
Several current U.S.-based ByteDance investors would also be part of this group, while the company’s Chinese shareholders would own the remaining portion, according to The Wall Street Journal.
This appears to comply with the law’s requirement that ownership by those tied to foreign adversaries, like China, remain under 20 percent.
Notably, the Trump administration has a lot of flexibility in deciding what counts as a “qualified divestiture” under the law, said Jim Johnston, a partner at the law firm Davis+Gilbert.
“That’s the portion of the statute that gives the administration its greatest latitude, and I think we’ve seen over the last nine months that if this administration has latitude, it’s going to exercise it to achieve its aims,” Johnston told The Hill.
What happens to the algorithm?
The divest-or-ban law also blocks “any cooperation with respect to the operation of a content recommendation algorithm or an agreement with respect to data sharing.”
After Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced Monday that the U.S. had a “framework” for a TikTok deal, Chinese officials have suggested the agreement would entail licensing the app’s algorithm.
This prospect has raised concerns about how such a deal would adhere to the law and address the national security risks at the heart of the TikTok ban.
Check out the full report at TheHill.com.
