Top US officials said on Monday that the US and China have achieved a framework agreement to transfer ownership of the short-video app TikTok to the US. President Donald Trump is scheduled to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday.
Following a meeting between senior US and Chinese officials in Madrid, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer announced the deal, although they would not disclose any of its commercial aspects.
Bessent informed reporters that further information would be decided during a Friday call between Xi and Trump.
Trump signaled that an agreement had been struck to address the US’s concerns with TikTok ownership when he claimed on Monday that trade negotiations with China had gone extremely well.
“The United States of America and China’s major trade meeting in Europe has gone really nicely! “It will soon come to an end,” Trump tweeted on his Truth Social page.
Additionally, an agreement was struck regarding a particular business that our nation’s youth were eager to preserve. They’ll be overjoyed! On Friday, I will address President Xi. The romance is still going strong!
According to a US individual familiar with the talks, Washington would move up with a TikTok ban earlier on Monday unless China backed off from its demands for lower tariffs and technological limitations as part of a divestment agreement.
As part of a round of larger discussions on tariffs and economic policy in Madrid, Chinese and American delegations met to discuss the Chinese company ByteDance’s disengagement from TikTok.
If TikTok doesn’t transfer ownership to the US, it might be taken down as early as September 17. Bessent and Greer had earlier told reporters that China was seeking trade and technological concessions in return for agreeing to divest from the well-known social media platform.
Bessent stated, “We are not willing to sacrifice national security for a social media app,” in response to the highly aggressive request from our Chinese counterparts.
Inadequate timing
The fourth round of US-China discussions in four months to handle tense economic relations and an impending divestment deadline for TikTok started on Sunday at the Spanish foreign ministry’s baroque Palacio de Santa Cruz.
They occurred in response to Washington’s demand—which Beijing said Monday was an attempt at coercion—that its allies impose tariffs on Chinese imports due to China’s purchases of Russian oil.
Beijing separately declared on Monday that the US chip firm Nvidia had broken its anti-monopoly law, according to the results of an initial probe. According to Bessent, the timing of the Nvidia announcement was bad.
Many people believe that the investigation is a reprisal for Washington’s restrictions on the Chinese chip industry.
SOURCE: DAWN NEWS
