The saga of the sale of TikTok’s US business that began more than five years ago will finally be finalized this week. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said after two days of talks with Chinese representatives in Kuala Lumpur, the terms of the much-delayed sale will be finalized by President Donald Trump and Xi Jinping on Thursday in South Korea during the APEC summit.
The value of the sale and who will take over TikTok’s US business will also be finally known this week. Trump forced Bytedance to sell TikTok when he first took office in 2020. TikTok was accused of posing a security risk by sharing American user data with China. Bytedance denied this and the data was then stored in an Oracle-owned browser.
President Biden later did not proceed with the executive order to force the sale but later went ahead with it at the end of his administration. TikTok and CapCut were removed from major US app stores for several days for failing to comply with the order before Trump later extended the sales deadline several times shortly after he was elected president for a second time.
