The White House said the deal for the US business of short-video sharing platform TikTok is expected to be signed in the coming days.
White House spokeswoman Caroline Levitt told the American television channel Fox News that the details of the app's future in the US "have already been agreed upon," DPA reported, quoted by BTA.
“Now it just needs to be signed and that will happen. I expect that in the coming days“, Levitt said.
“TikTok“s parent company, Beijing-based ByteDance, is facing with months of uncertainty surrounding the app's operations in the United States, where it has about 170 million users.
US officials have expressed concern that the Chinese government could gain access to vast amounts of personal data and use the platform to exert political influence. “TikTok“ and “ByteDance“ have denied this.
Levitt said that under the deal “TikTok“ will be “majority owned by Americans in the United States. There will be seven seats on the board of directors that oversees the app in the United States, and six of those seats will be American.“
“The data and privacy will be managed by one of the largest American technology companies, “Oracle“, and the algorithm will also be American-controlled,“ Levitt continued.
By law, passed last year, TikTok's U.S. business had to be sold to ByteDance or taken offline by Jan. 19. Trump agreed to a reprieve after taking office in January, repeatedly delaying its implementation despite having no legal basis for doing so.
In the U.S., ByteDance - and therefore TikTok - are considered Chinese companies. ByteDance counters that the company is 60% owned by international investors and is based in the Cayman Islands.