Trump suggests deal reached over the future of TikTok as he announces call with Xi

By JOSH BOAK Associated Press WASHINGTON AP A meeting between U S and Chinese authorities went well and a deal was reached regarding a certain company that young people in our Country very much yearned to save President Donald Trump posted on his social media site on Monday Trump s comment suggests that the company is TikTok the social media company associated with China that U S law requires to be sold or else cease operations The Republican president has repeatedly extended the deadline on TikTok s fate and was noncommittal on an agreement when appealed by reporters on Sunday evening Trump also noted that he would be speaking on Friday with Chinese leader Xi Jinping Related Articles Little daylight between US and Israel evident as Rubio and Netanyahu meet King Charles III to deploy tiara diplomacy as UK prepares to welcome Trump for second state visit The Fed faces economic uncertainty and political pressure as it decides whether to cut rates China starts probes targeting US semiconductor sector Rhode Island judge halts effort by HUD to change criteria for homeless funding The Chinese ruling body has yet to confirm Trump s statements The basis of Trump s post stemmed from a meeting in Spain that U S Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had with Chinese functionaries including Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in which TikTok was to be a subject according to a message by the Treasury Department During Joe Biden s Democratic presidency Congress and the White House used national assurance grounds to approve a U S ban on TikTok unless its parent company ByteDance sold its controlling stake But Trump has kept delaying the viable reckoning for the social media app He has extended the deadline three times during his second term with the next one coming up on Sept TikTok is one of more than apps developed in the past decade by ByteDance a mechanism firm founded in by Chinese entrepreneur Zhang Yiming and headquartered in Beijing s northwestern Haidian district In ByteDance launched a short-form video platform called Douyin in China and followed up with an international version called TikTok It then bought Musical ly a lip-syncing platform popular with teens in the U S and Europe and combined it with TikTok while keeping the app separate from Douyin Soon after the app boomed in popularity in the U S and multiple other countries becoming the first Chinese platform to make serious inroads in the West Unlike other social media platforms that focused on cultivating connections among users TikTok tailored content to people s interests The often silly videos and music clips content creators posted gave TikTok an image as a sunny corner of the internet where users could find fun and a sense of authenticity Finding an audience on the platform helped launch the careers of music artists like Lil Nas X TikTok gained more traction during the shutdowns of the COVID- pandemic when short dances that went viral became a mainstay of the app To better compete Instagram and YouTube eventually came out with their own tools for making short-form videos respectively known as Reels and Shorts By that point TikTok was a bona fide hit Challenges came in tandem with TikTok s success U S personnel expressed concerns about the company s roots and ownership pointing to laws in China that require Chinese companies to hand over evidence requested by the regime Another concern became the proprietary algorithm that populates what users see on the app