US President Donald Trump officially signed an executive order, finalising plans that would see ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, divest its US operations to investors, both within the US and globally. The deal, as per Vice President JD Vance, values the new US company at US$14 billion (~RM59 billion).
The signing of the executive orders brings a close to a chapter for TikTok, one that started all the way back during Trump’s first term as the US President. “There was some resistance on the Chinese side, but the fundamental thing that we wanted to accomplish is that we wanted to keep TikTok operating, but we also wanted to make sure that we protected Americans’ data privacy as required by law,” Vance told reporters at an Oval Office briefing.
Trump also said that he spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping, whom he said approved the plans. “I spoke with President Xi,” Trump said. “We had a good talk, I told him what we were doing, and he said go ahead with it.”
Since taking office for the second time, Trump has delayed the TikTok ban several times since 20 January. During the signing, he also said that investors for the US-arm of TikTok include Michael Dell, CEO of Dell Technologies, and Rupert Murdoch, the former chairman of Fox News.
The new executive order also means that ByteDance will hold less than 20% of TikTok US, to comply with the requirements set out in 2024, whereby the platform would shut down by January 2025 if it were not by then.
(Source: Reuters)
