Bessent Confirms TikTok Deal Framework With China; Trump and Xi to Finalize Friday

China and the United States have agreed to a "framework" deal for the future of TikTok, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced Monday during trade negotiations in Madrid.

Bessent said the deal, although between private parties, has settled on commercial terms. The transaction is hoped to move TikTok's U.S. business into American-controlled hands.

Both U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are set to meet Friday to discuss and sign the deal. Trump also alluded to the deal on Truth Social, where he labeled it a solution including a company that "young people in our Country very much wanted to save."

The statement is made days ahead of a September 17 deadline that needs ByteDance, the parent firm of TikTok, to sell its U.S. business or risk a potential ban. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer stated that the deadline might be extended marginally in order to finalize the agreement but eliminated repeated postponements.

China's chief trade negotiator, Li Chenggang, confirmed the outline and called on Washington not to continue aiming at Chinese companies. The talks are part of wider U.S.-China trade negotiations that have been tense owing to tariffs and curbs in recent months.

TikTok has so far not issued any statement on the development.

The app has come under increasing criticism in the U.S. on the grounds of national security. Congress once voted on laws prohibiting app store owners from hosting TikTok because of its designation as a "foreign adversary-controlled application." Trump, however, delayed previous shutdowns by issuing executive orders, giving ByteDance additional time to find a buyer.

Names of possible investors have been floated for months, including Oracle's Larry Ellison, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, AI startup Perplexity, and Project Liberty founder Frank McCourt. Trump earlier said he had "very wealthy people" who wanted to buy TikTok, but would not name them.

TikTok Secretary Commerce Howard Lutnick reaffirmed earlier this year that the platform would be closed down in the U.S. if Beijing didn't allow for more independence for American users and operations. This was despite Trump's declaration of TikTok as a threat to national security, with the White House itself creating an official TikTok account in August.

The result of Friday's summit between Trump and Xi will decide if TikTok can continue to be accessed by millions of American users or if it is pushed into a future unknown.