'Have A Deal': Trump Says 'Very Big' Companies Lining Up To Buy TikTok

United States President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that a group of "very big" companies want to buy the popular Chinese short-video format app TikTok.

The US "now has a deal", Trump said, while speaking to reporters at the White House. His administration has been in talks with Beijing over the transfer of ownership of TikTok in the United States.

This development comes a day after after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer met Chinese negotiators led by Vice Premier He Lifeng for the second day of trade negotiations in Madrid.

The two sides arrived in Madrid to finalise technical details of the TikTok deal. A US official told Bloomberg that Chinese demands on trade and national security issues could derail the negotiations. While China aims to link trade issues to the TikTok deal, the US reportedly wants to keep the matters separate.

This agreement and dialogue are seen as a precursor to a long-anticipated meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday.

The stakes remain high for TikTok. The app could "go dark" in the US if its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, does not sell its American operations to a US-approved buyer before a looming deadline — or if Beijing refuses to authorise the sale. On Sunday, Trump told reporters his administration was prepared to "let it die."

Although the Trump administration has not named the buyer, CNN reported that the group is widely believed to be led by Oracle executive chairman Larry Ellison, a known Trump supporter. Trump had said in January he would support Ellison acquiring TikTok's US assets.

Trump has repeatedly extended his own deadlines to secure a deal for the sale of ByteDance's US TikTok business to an American-backed entity. The pressure increased after Congress passed, and former President Joe Biden signed, a bipartisan bill banning TikTok in the US over national security concerns, with an exception allowing TikTok to remain if ByteDance divested its US holdings.

TikTok briefly went dark in the US on Jan. 18 — the eve of the Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act taking effect. On Jan. 19, the day before Trump began his second term, he announced plans to sign an executive action that would protect US companies from penalties for hosting TikTok on their platforms.

That executive order, signed on Jan. 20, paused the enforcement of the law for 75 days. Trump extended the deadline again in June, and most recently to Sept. 17.