China and the US have reached a preliminary framework agreement on the future of TikTok, paving the way for the social media giant to remain operational in the US under American-controlled ownership, according to multiple media outlets. Further details have not yet been made public.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made the announcement in Madrid on Monday, following two days of negotiations with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng. The deal is expected to be finalised after President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump speak on Friday, Bessant said.
TikTok has faced the threat of a ban in the US unless its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, divested ownership due to what Washington purports to be national security concerns.
Last year, under former US President Joe Biden, congress passed legislation mandating the separation, with anxious US politicians accusing Beijing of seeking to harvest the data of Tiktok’s youthful American users. Trump has repeatedly delayed enforcement of the measure, but 17 September had been viewed as a final deadline before a ban would take effect.
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“The framework is for a switch to a US-controlled ownership,” Bessent told reporters, noting that it also enabled a short extension of the deadline to complete the deal.
While mainly focused on TikTok, the Madrid discussions also touched on China’s export controls on rare earth minerals and its lack of US agricultural purchases, along with ways to curb money laundering and the illegal fentanyl trade.
Bessent said more in-depth trade talks were likely to happen “in about a month in a different location,” where rare earth minerals and magnets would take centre stage. Analysts have said they expect Xi and Trump to meet in October, at the APEC summit in South Korea.
Madrid marks the fourth round of China-US trade talks in four months, after earlier sessions in Geneva, London and Stockholm. In July, negotiators agreed to extend for 90 days a truce that paused triple-digit tariffs and restarted rare earth shipments. That pause runs until 10 November.
