White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Saturday offered a fuller picture of a TikTok deal between the United States and China that would allow the app to continue operating on American phones. She said software giant Oracle would handle data and privacy for the new U.S. TikTok, and described a new board for the company with a majority of American directors.
Speaking on the Fox News program “Saturday in America,” Leavitt said that “we are 100% confident that a deal is done,” but added in the same breath that the deal had not yet been signed. She said that could happen in the coming days.
The Trump administration and China have offered vague statements this past week about the status of a deal to save TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance. Congress last year passed a rare bipartisan law to ban the app unless it found a new, non-Chinese owner, because of fears that Beijing could use its ties to TikTok to get Americans’ sensitive user data or to spread propaganda in the country.
President Donald Trump told reporters Friday that Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, had approved a deal. A spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Commerce said Saturday that the two sides had reached a basic framework agreement.
Leavitt’s remarks Saturday suggested a deal similar to one ByteDance has been working toward for months, which would spin out a new U.S. TikTok entity. Under that plan, some of TikTok’s largest investors would maintain their stake in the U.S. app, while ByteDance would also bring in new U.S. investors to reduce Chinese ownership to less than 20% in order to satisfy the law.
She said a new board controlling TikTok in the United States would have seven seats, with six held by Americans. She also confirmed that Oracle, which provides computing resources for TikTok, would lead “data and privacy” for the new entity.
Speculation had been mounting this past week that Oracle, run by Larry Ellison, would be part of a consortium of American investors who would take a stake in TikTok to separate the app from ByteDance.
Trump “recognized the need to protect Americans’ privacy and data while also keeping this app open,” Leavitt said. “This deal does put Americans first.”
Crucially, she also said that TikTok’s powerful recommendation algorithm would be “controlled by America.” Who controls that technology has been at the center of concerns about TikTok’s data privacy.
It was unclear if the algorithm would be licensed or altered. Chinese law says that the algorithm must remain under Chinese control, but U.S. law requires TikTok to be cut off from any “operational relationship” with ByteDance, “including any cooperation with respect to the operation of a content recommendation algorithm.”
ByteDance and Oracle did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
If the TikTok deal comes to fruition, it would end years of uncertainty around the app’s existence in the United States. The law requiring the app to shut down if it remained under Chinese control took effect in January, after the Supreme Court blocked a challenge, but Trump has delayed its enforcement four times.
China has long been a major obstacle to finding a deal for TikTok. When the United States first pushed to force a sale of TikTok, China amended its export control list to include technology like algorithms and source codes, giving it the power to weigh in on any deal involving TikTok.
This past week, Trump officials appeared to have won Beijing’s support for this framework, though statements from China have been more vague than Leavitt’s remarks were Saturday.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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