Trump claims TikTok buyer group found, but China approval needed

ByteDance’s US future has hung in the balance for years, starting with the first Trump administration putting pressure on the Beijing company to sell the asset to an American entity.

US president Donald Trump said he has identified a buyer for the US operations of TikTok, the social media app owned by Chinese company ByteDance Ltd, without naming the winning bidder.

Completing a sale would be contingent on Beijing and Chinese president Xi Jinping’s agreement, Mr Trump added in a pre-taped interview on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo.

ByteDance and the Chinese government have long opposed such a deal.

Mr Trump said: “We have a buyer for TikTok, by the way. I think I’ll need, probably, China approval, and I think President Xi will probably do it.

It’s a group of very wealthy people

US and Chinese officials affirmed at the end of last week that they have agreed a trade framework, moving toward settling trade hostilities, following talks in London earlier in June.

ByteDance’s US future has hung in the balance for years, starting with the first Trump administration putting pressure on the Beijing company to sell the asset to an American entity.

Further deadline pushback

A January deadline for ByteDance to find a local buyer was pushed back twice by Mr Trump, who this month extended it again by a further 90 days from June 19.

The US congress passed a law last year requiring the divestiture, citing national security concerns.

Under the law, the US president was allowed to invoke one extension. However, Mr Trump has mused that TikTok in the US could be worth as much as $1tn (€852bn) and has repeatedly shown a willingness to broker a deal.

Movement on a sale had largely stalled as US-China trade ties frayed due to a larger clash over tariff negotiations. Before Mr Trump announced tariffs in April, a deal was said to be close, advanced by a consortium of US investors that includes Oracle Corp, Blackstone Inc, and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

• Bloomberg