Trump Approves TikTok U.S. Spin-Off Framework

President Trump signed an executive order approving a framework to spin off TikTok’s U.S. operations into a U.S.-based joint venture to comply with the 2024 divest-or-ban law and keep the app operating in the United States. The plan reportedly includes U.S. investors Oracle and Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi’s MGX holding majority control while China’s ByteDance would retain less than 20% equity. Vice President J.D. Vance, who led the interagency review, estimated the U.S. entity’s value at about $14 billion; Oracle is slated to provide security and cloud services and to inspect and retrain recommendation algorithms using U.S. data, with requirements for U.S. data storage and intense monitoring of updates and data flows. The order pauses enforcement of the ban for 120 days to allow the divestiture to proceed, and the administration says the arrangement satisfies national-security concerns. Trump said Chinese President Xi Jinping approved the deal after their call, but Beijing’s formal acceptance remains unclear and the plan has drawn scrutiny from lawmakers and national-security and privacy critics.