President Donald Trump said he has identified a buyer for the US operations of TikTok social media app owned by Chinese company ByteDance Ltd., but he won’t provide details for two weeks.
“We have a buyer for Tiktok, by the way. I think I’ll need probably China approval and I think President Xi will probably do it,” he said, referring to Chinese leader Xi Jinping, in an interview on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo.
“It’s a group of very wealthy people.” The interview, which aired Sunday, was taped on Friday.
Trump earlier said he would extend for the third time a deadline for Bytedance to sell the US portions of TikTok, which would give the company 90 days beyond June 19.
Congress passed a law last year requiring the divestiture, citing national security concerns.
Under the law, the president was allowed to invoke one extension.
Movement on a deal has largely stalled with US-China trade relations swept up in larger tensions over tariff negotiations.
Before Trump announced widespread tariffs in April, a deal was reportedly close, advanced by a consortium of US investors including Oracle Corp., Blackstone Inc. and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
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