Trump says TikTok buyer group found, needs China nod

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(Bloomberg) — President Donald Trump said he has identified a buyer for the U.S. operations of TikTok, the social media app owned by Chinese company ByteDance Ltd., without naming the winning bidder.

Completing a sale would be contingent on Beijing and President Xi Jinping’s agreement, Trump added in a pre-taped interview on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo. ByteDance and the Chinese government have long opposed such a deal.

“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,” the US president said. “It’s a group of very wealthy people.”

U.S. and Chinese officials affirmed at the end of last week that they’ve agreed a trade framework, moving toward settling trade hostilities following talks in London earlier in June.

ByteDance’s US future has hung in the balance for years, starting with the first Trump administration putting pressure on the Beijing company to sell the asset to an American entity. A January deadline for ByteDance to find a local buyer was pushed back twice by Trump, who this month extended it again by a further 90 days from June 19.

The US Congress passed a law last year requiring the divestiture, citing national security concerns. Under the law, the president was allowed to invoke one extension. But Trump has mused that TikTok in the US could be worth as much as one trillion dollars and repeatedly shown a willingness to broker a deal.

Movement on a sale had largely stalled as US-China trade ties frayed due to a larger clash over tariff negotiations. Before Trump announced widespread tariffs in April, a deal was said to be close, advanced by a consortium of US investors including Oracle Corp., Blackstone Inc. and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

The White House did not respond to a request for more details on Trump’s latest remarks. When asked about the deal mentioned by Trump, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told reporters at a regular press briefing in Beijing on Monday that on TikTok-related issues, China “has reiterated its principled position,” saying she had nothing further to add.

Representatives from ByteDance and TikTok did not respond to requests for comment.

— With assistance from Stephanie Lai, Zheping Huang, Colum Murphy and Mayumi Negishi.