Donald Trump has indicated in a vague Truth Social post that a deal with China has been reached that will allow TikTok to keep operating in the U.S.
“The big Trade Meeting in Europe between The United States of America, and China, has gone VERY WELL! It will be concluding shortly,” Trump wrote.
“A deal was also reached on a ‘certain’ company that young people in our Country very much wanted to save. They will be very happy! I will be speaking to President Xi on Friday. The relationship remains a very strong one!!!”
The post arrived after Trump suggested that a deal with China to allow the app to continue running may not be agreed upon.
“We may let it die, or we may, I don’t know, it depends, up to China‚” Trump told reporters in New Jersey on Sunday. “It doesn’t matter too much. I’d like to do it for the kids that like it.”
The dispute surrounding TikTok has raged for years over concerns about national security related to the app. In April 2024, a bipartisan bill was passed in Congress to ban TikTok in the U.S. unless its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, sells the app to an American company.
In December, then president-elect Trump asked the Supreme Court to delay the enforcement of the ban until one day before his second inauguration, resulting in the app briefly going down for its U.S. users on January 18.
The following day, the president signed an executive order granting TikTok, the hugely popular video-sharing platform among young people, a reprieve from being shut down in the U.S. for 90 days.
Since then, Trump has frequently extended the deadline for ByteDance to either sell off the app or shut it down completely, with the latest deadline set to expire on Wednesday.
Chinese and U.S. officials are due to meet in Madrid to discuss issues such as trade. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed that the problems surrounding TikTok were likely to be discussed during the talks, and that a framework agreement had been reached.
“President Trump played a role in this, we had a call with him last night, we had specific guidance from him we shared it with our Chinese counterparts,” Bessent said in Madrid on Monday. “Without his leadership and the leverage he provides, we would not have been able to include the deal today.”
Bessent said Trump will speak with China’s President Xi Jinping to “complete” the deal on Friday.
Trump, who previously supported banning TikTok, changed his mind following his 2024 election victory.
“I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok,” he said last December while claiming he “won youth by 34 points, and there are those that say that TikTok had something to do with it.”
Trump even got his own TikTok account during the 2024 campaign, where he amassed more than 15 million followers, although it has been dormant since last November.
