Trump Will Sign TikTok Executive Order on Thursday

Source Credit : Reuters

President Donald Trump will sign an executive order on Thursday that declares a deal being negotiated by the White House to sell TikTok's U.S. operations will meet requirements set out in a 2024 law, a White House source with knowledge of the matter said.

Earlier this week, the White House said Trump will declare that a deal to divest TikTok's U.S. operations from its Chinese owner ByteDance will meet requirements set out in a law passed by Congress that bans the short video app unless its Chinese owner is ended.

Trump has credited TikTok, which has 170 million U.S. users, with helping him win re-election last year and has 15 million followers on his personal account. The White House also launched an official TikTok account last month.

Trump has delayed enforcement of the law through mid-December amid efforts to extract TikTok's U.S. assets from the global platform, line up American investors and ensure that the new ownership qualifies as a full divestiture needed under the 2024 law.

The White House said that the U.S. TikTok will be owned by a joint venture in which ByteDance will have less than 20% ownership. The shares will be majority U.S.-owned, and likewise the board will have an American majority. Importantly, the new U.S. TikTok will get access to ByteDance’s industry-leading recommendation engine that picks the next video for users to watch, though important details remain unclear.

The White House says that U.S. investors in the joint venture will include Oracle and Silverlake, a private-equity firm, and that Oracle will continue to provide U.S. cloud services.

According to new data from Sensor Tower, TikTok had 66 million daily average U.S. users in the third quarter, putting it in fourth place among social media apps behind Google’s YouTube and Meta’s Facebook and Instagram. U.S. daily user counts rose very quickly from 2019 to 2023, but growth has stagnated since then.

A further extension is expected in the executive order on Thursday.