The White House claimed on Saturday that the US operations of TikTok will be spun off, its board will be mostly Americans and its algorithm will be controlled in the US, after President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping discussed a deal for the short video platform in a phone call on Friday.
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The US unit of TikTok will be majority-owned and controlled by American investors under the deal to separate from its Chinese owner, ByteDance, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News on Saturday.
Leavitt explained that six of the seven board seats on TikTok’s board will be occupied by Americans, adding that the final deal would be signed in the coming days.
“So all of those details have already been agreed upon, now we just need this deal to be signed and that will be happening, I anticipate, in the coming days,” Leavitt said.
After Friday’s call, Trump suggested a TikTok deal “was sealed”, and when pressed for further detail later in the day, he stopped short of confirming that US investors would have full control of the app’s Chinese algorithm.
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“It’s all being worked out. We’re going to have very good control,” Trump said when asked if he would accept a deal where China controls the algorithm.
