China-US Strike TikTok Deal After Threat of Shutdown
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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the threat of allowing the social media app TikTok to go dark in the U.S. was what ultimately sealed a framework deal in Madrid that would see the American iteration of the platform enter U.S. hands — severing connections with its Chinese parent company ByteDance.
Bessent and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer met with their Chinese counterparts in Spain for several hours of negotiations to finalize the transfer of the app. Talks appeared to falter midday Sept. 15, when the U.S. side considered a list of what it described as “aggressive asks” by the Chinese.
“The Chinese came in with a big list of asks — they described it as compensation — for TikTok,” Bessent said in an interview in Madrid after the talks concluded. “With the leverage that President Trump had given Ambassador Greer and myself, we were able to disabuse them of the notion that we had room for big gives.”
“Basically what they got was the promise of things that won’t happen rather than taking things off,” he said from a suite at the Madrid hotel where the delegation was staying.
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47)
Trump said earlier in a social media post that he and Chinese President Xi Jinping would be speaking Sept. 19. Bessent said at a press briefing that it will be up for the two leaders “to complete the deal.”
A U.S. official said separately that, had there been no deal with China over TikTok, an in-person summit meeting between Trump and Xi on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum gathering in South Korea late next month would have been off the table. A Trump state visit to China would also have been off the table, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive issue.
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