President Donald Trump has issued an order directing the Department of Justice to continue refusing to enforce a 2024 law banning the popular video sharing app TikTok while negotiations continue over a deal that would place control of the platform in American hands.
The order delays enforcement of the law, which would ban the application in the U.S., until December 16.
Trump first signed an order purporting to waive enforcement of the law, which was passed by Congress and signed by then-president Joe Biden over the national security concerns posed by Chinese ownership of a platform used regularly by more than 170 million Americans.
The latest extension comes as American and Chinese negotiators have agreed on a framework for a deal to place TikTok’s American operations under the control of a U.S. consortium that would reportedly own 80 percent of a new company to operate the app.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Americans using TikTok would move to a new app built with a new version of the Chinese-made recommendation algorithm that was the source of concerns which led to the law banning the app in the United States.
Wang Jingtao, deputy director of China’s top cyberspace regulator, told reporters in Madrid that the two sides had “reached a basic consensus on resolving the TikTok issue.”
He added that Beijing had agreed to “licensing the use of TikTok’s algorithm and other intellectual property rights” and said negotiators had reached an accord on “entrusting the operations of U.S. user data and content security business.”
Trump also announced that a deal had been reached while speaking to reporters before leaving the White House for a state visit to the United Kingdom on Tuesday.
He said he’d be speaking with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Friday “to confirm everything up.”
“We made a very good trade deal, and I hope good for both countries, but a very different deal than they’ve made in the past. We’ll be announcing that we have a group of very big companies that want to buy it,” he said.
