Trump Addresses Whether TikTok Deal Will Allow China To Control Algorithm

President Donald Trump assured Americans Friday that Beijing would not dictate the terms of TikTok’s future in the United States.

Trump extended TikTok’s sell-or-ban deadline to Dec. 16, promoting a plan that would place the app under U.S. investors while leaving questions about its ties to ByteDance’s algorithm unresolved. The Daily Caller’s White House correspondent Reagan Reese asked Trump whether he would accept a deal granting China control of TikTok’s algorithm. Trump said negotiations remain underway but emphasized that U.S. stakeholders would set the rules.

“It’s all being worked at. We’re going to have very good control. We have American, these are American investors, all of them. And they all love our country. They’re all very well-known people, very famous people, actually, financially. And they’ll have control of it,” Trump told Reese.

Trump then praised Chinese President Xi Jinping and pointed to what he described as a productive relationship.

WATCH: 

🚨 President Trump reveals whether or not he would accept a deal where China controls the algorithm on TikTok: @reaganreese_ pic.twitter.com/LCvbGnmSzv

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) September 19, 2025

“I want to thank President Xi because he was a gentleman. And we’ve just had a good relationship and we wanted people, a lot of people in this country want it to be open,” Trump said. “And again, if it weren’t open, if it weren’t open, maybe, I don’t know, I think we won by so much it wouldn’t have mattered, but we got a lot of votes, we got a lot of Republican votes from very young people.”

The emerging deal would make TikTok’s U.S. business majority-owned by an Oracle-led investor group, cutting ByteDance’s stake to below 20%, according to Politico. The proposed U.S. bloc includes Oracle, Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz, while Reuters reported that KKR and General Atlantic were also included. (RELATED: Trump Hints At TikTok Deal With China As Deadline Approaches)

Negotiators are weighing whether to license ByteDance’s recommendation algorithm to a U.S. app or build a domestic fork with its own algorithm and training. Reuters reported in July that TikTok had already started developing a separate U.S. app with distinct data storage and a new algorithm.

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