Trump makes way for $14 billion deal to save TikTok in the U.S.

President Trump approved a proposal Thursday that would save TikTok in the U.S. by putting the wildly popular app’s operation under American companies and investors, a deal that Vice President J.D. Vance estimates to be worth $14 billion.

Mr. Trump said Chinese President Xi Jinping gave the administration the “go-ahead.” TikTok is run by Chinese-owned ByteDance.

The app’s American operations will be run by a joint venture among American investors, owners and boards of directors, such as tech giant Oracle and investment firm Silver Lake Partners. The White House said Oracle is expected to oversee the app’s security, including the algorithm. The American consortium will have a majority stake of about 80%, with ByteDance holding no more than a 20% stake.

The president said his national security concerns had been satisfied because TikTok would be owned by “sophisticated, smart Americans.”

Mr. Trump signaled that media mogul Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan Murdoch, tech founder Michael Dell, and a few others he called “world-class investors” could be involved.

Mr. Vance said the Chinese resisted the deal, but “we wanted to keep TikTok operating” while protecting American users’ data so they could “use it with more confidence than they had in the past.”

“This is going to be American-operated all the way, and great respect for President Xi, and I very much appreciate that he approved the deal because to get it done properly, we really needed the support of China,” Mr. Trump said in the Oval Office.

He said “everyone’s going to be treated fairly” on the app’s algorithm, but he joked that he would love to see all the content be “MAGA related.”

“If I could make it 100% MAGA, I would, but it’s not going to work out that way, unfortunately,” he said jokingly. “Every group, every philosophy, every policy will be treated fairly.”

Mr. Vance said the deal ensures that “the American investors will control the algorithm.”

“We don’t want this used as a propaganda tool by any foreign government. We want to make sure that our people and our investors actually make these decisions based on what’s good for their business as opposed to what’s [good] for another government’s propaganda arm,” he said.

The U.S. government won’t have a board position or take equity in the joint venture, the White House said.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun told reporters Monday that the Chinese government “respects the wishes of the company in question, and would be happy to see productive commercial negotiations.”

Congress passed legislation last year to ban the app in the U.S. by Jan. 19 if it wasn’t sold to an American company. President Biden signed the bill in April 2024. The national security concern was over Americans’ use of the Chinese-owned app.

ByteDance insisted that users’ personal information was protected and denied the national security concerns. It filed a lawsuit in U.S. federal court to stop the ban, arguing it violated users’ First Amendment right to free speech.

On his first day back in office, Mr. Trump extended the deadline for TikTok’s sale by 75 days. He has extended it multiple times since, most recently until Dec. 16. The app went dark briefly on Jan. 19 for the more than 150 million U.S. users as the federal ban took effect before Mr. Trump stepped in to save it.

In his first term, Mr. Trump issued an executive order to ban TikTok, but the move was challenged in court and then revoked by Mr. Biden in 2021.

The president reversed his advocacy of a ban after receiving votes from the younger generation, the biggest demographic on TikTok, last year.

In August, the White House launched its own TikTok account. In the first video on the account, dramatic piano and percussion music serve as the soundtrack to images of Mr. Trump meeting with people and greeting crowds.

“Every day I wake up determined to deliver a better life for the people all across this nation,” Mr. Trump says in the 27-second video. “I am your voice.”

Americans have increasingly turned to the social media app, which features short-form videos. A third of U.S. adults use TikTok, according to a 2024 survey from Pew Research Center.

Younger Americans are even more likely to use the app; 59% of those ages 18 to 29 said they are TikTok users. A majority of American teens, 63% of those 13 to 17, can be found on the app, and a majority use it daily.

A Pew Research Center survey released Thursday found that roughly 43% of American adults younger than 30 say they regularly get news from TikTok, more than any other social media site.

The national security implications of TikTok have been discussed for years. In 2022, Mr. Biden prohibited the use of the app on devices owned by federal agencies.