• Monday, June 30, 2025

Business

Trump says ‘he has found’ a TikTok buyer, confident of Chinese approval

U.S. President Donald Trump says a group of wealthy investors is ready to buy TikTok’s U.S. operations, but the deal still hinges on approval from China. Trump hinted identities will be revealed within two weeks as the deadline nears.

Several local copycats tried to fill the void left by TikTok’s departure from India, but the biggest beneficiaries were YouTube and Instagram. (Representational image from Getty)

By: Vibhuti Pathak

U.S. President Donald Trump said in a Fox News interview broadcast on Sunday (29) that he had found a buyer for the TikTok short-video app, which he described as a group of “very wealthy people” whose identities he will reveal in about two weeks.

Trump made the remarks in an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo” program. He said the deal he is developing would probably need China’s approval to move forward and he predicted Chinese President Xi Jinping would likely approve it.

The U.S. president earlier this month had extended to September 17 a deadline for China-based ByteDance to divest the U.S. assets of TikTok despite a law that mandated a sale or shutdown without significant progress.

Advertisement

A deal had been in the works this spring that would have spun off TikTok’s U.S. operations into a new U.S.-based firm, majority-owned and operated by U.S. investors, but it was put on hold after China indicated it would not approve it following Trump’s announcements of steep tariffs on Chinese goods.

“We have a buyer for TikTok, by the way,” Trump said. “I think I’ll need probably China’s approval. I think President Xi will probably do it.”

A 2024 U.S. law required TikTok to stop operating by January 19 unless ByteDance had completed divesting the app’s U.S. assets or demonstrated significant progress toward a sale.

Trump, who credits the app with boosting his support among young voters in last November’s presidential election, has extended the deadline three times.

Loading

Related Stories