The US segment of TikTok may be bought out by new owners, US President Donald Trump said in a statement.
The US leader said on Fox News television that he would announce the buyers of the TikTok social network business, owned by China’s ByteDance, in as little as two weeks.
Trump added that “it will probably take Chinese approval, and I think President Xi will probably do it. This is a group of very wealthy people.”
In the spring of 2024, the US House of Representatives approved legislation that allows the social network TikTok to be banned in the country unless it is spun off from Chinese company ByteDance, which owns it. Congressmen believed TikTok posed a threat to national security because the Chinese government could force ByteDance to hand over US users’ data to it. In April 2024, US President Joe Biden signed the document, and in January 2025, days before Trump’s inauguration, the US Supreme Court upheld the law.
After the inauguration on 20 January, Trump issued an executive order directing the US attorney general to delay the law’s entry into force for 75 days. He said that TikTok would be able to continue operating in the US provided that 50 per cent of its shares were transferred to US companies.
On 2 April, The New York Times, citing sources, reported that Amazon had submitted a last-minute bid to acquire the US division of TikTok from China’s ByteDance.
The bid was sent by letter to US Vice President J.D. Vance and the country’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. The newspaper’s interlocutors note that the various parties involved in negotiations to change TikTok’s ownership structure are not taking Amazon’s offer seriously. Amazon declined to comment.