News

Trump and Xi bless long-awaited deal to spin off U.S. TikTok

The Washington Post · Drew Harwell · last updated

TikTok has gotten a green light to spin off a new entity in the United States under different ownership as part of a long-awaited deal designed to sidestep a legally mandated ban of the wildly popular video app nationwide.

The approval came Friday after President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping concluded a call on which they discussed the app, which has 170 million U.S. users and is currently owned by the Chinese tech giant ByteDance.

The Chinese government, which had criticized a potential sale, said it welcomed businesses to “conduct commercial negotiations based on market rules” and that it believed the U.S. would support “the consultations between the two teams to properly resolve the TikTok issue,” Chinese state media reported.

View full article

Related Knowledge Center: The TikTok ban

State of Play

The U.S. Congress passed and President Joe Biden signed into law a measure banning TikTok if it weren’t sold by its Chinese ownership. But now-President Donald Trump gave the service a reprieve, and a sale of its U.S. operations appears imminent.

Social media

More information

here today, more tomorrow

We’ve launched briefing.center with a focus on the press and media.

And we’ve added Citizen Cartwright, a daily quick-read news summary by veteran Washington journalist Linda Cartwright. We’ve also created a new voting rights knowledge center for Citizen Cartwright subscribers. (You can sign up for a dedicated morning email at citizencartwright.com.)

You can sign up here for full access to press and media and Citizen Cartwright on briefing.center.

You can use briefing.center as the center of your information management, or just one of your tools. We’re happy to discuss your information needs.

Sign up