• by Colin Kirkland , September 15, 2025

Following three executive order extensions issued by President Donald Trump, U.S. trade representative Jamieson Greer said on Monday that the Trump administration has reached a selloff deal with China to keep TikTok alive for American users.

“We were very focused on TikTok and making sure that it was a deal that is fair for the Chinese and completely respects US national security concerns, and that’s the deal we reached,” said Greer. “And of course, we want to ensure that the Chinese have a fair, invested environment in the United States, but always that U.S. national security comes first.”

The U.S.-backed buyer has not yet been named and the deal will not be finalized until Trump speaks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, which he is expected to do on Friday.

Top Chinese trade negotiator Li Chenggang has confirmed that both sides have reached a consensus on resolving previous issues related to a potential TikTok deal, but also warned the U.S. against suppressing Chinese companies.

The U.S. federal government decided to ban or sell off TikTok in January, when the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act with regard to China's potential access to Americans' user data.

Since then, Trump has issued three legally dubious executive orders extending the selloff of the short-form video-sharing app.

In that time, President Trump had issued public claims that his administration was close to finalizing deals with a handful of companies, including a statement from Vice President J.D. Vance that the White House would reach a selloff deal at the start of April, which did not materialize due to steep tariffs that Trump imposed on China at the time.

Last month, the Chinese government's cooperation in the U.S.-led selloff deal seemed even less probable than before, when China's state-affiliated news outlet China Daily published an article scrutinizing the Trump administration's decision to set up a newfound TikTok account, although it had called the app a national security threat.

Due to analysts' expectation that TikTok will cost a U.S.-backed buyer tens of billions of dollars, Larry Ellison, who is Oracle executive chairman and one of the world's richest people, has emerged as a likely candidate to purchase the ByteDance-owned social media company's U.S. assets.

“We're not going to be in the business of having repetitive extensions,” Greer added. “We have a deal.”