Donald Trump and Xi Jinping will speak on Friday after their negotiators agreed a framework that will see TikTok transferred to American ownership. But the details of the deal remained unclear on Monday, even to treasury secretary Scott Bessent, who is leading the US team at the talks in Madrid.
“President Trump and party chair Xi will speak on Friday to complete the deal, but we do have a framework for the deal with TikTok,” he said.
“I think the framework is for it to switch to US-controlled ownership.”
The Trump administration had threatened to shut down TikTok in the US unless its Chinese owner ByteDance agreed to divest its American operations to comply with a national security law introduced by the Joe Biden administration.
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The problem was that the app’s algorithm, the secret sauce that keeps hundreds of millions of users engaged, is subject to Chinese export controls.
American negotiators complained this week that China was seeking concessions on reduced tariffs and technology restrictions in return for a deal on TikTok.
And Beijing flexed some muscle on Monday when its regulator found that US chipmaker Nvidia breached competition rules during a takeover of a smaller company five years ago.
China showed Trump that it could damage the US economy by restricting the export of rare earth minerals that are essential to much of today’s manufacturing.
But grim economic data from Beijing on Monday underscored the fact that China’s economy cannot shrug off the impact of a prolonged trade war with the US.
China has diverted some exports from the US to other markets but few are as profitable and some are putting up their own trade barriers to resist a flood of cheap manufactured goods. The call on Friday will be the next stage in a process expected to lead to a meeting between Trump and Xi next month when it will be in both of their interests to strike a deal.
