What is this Tiktok agreement that Trump continues to talk about?

US President Donald Trump will sign a decree on Thursday, confirming that an agreement to assign the US Tiktok operations of its Chinese owner bytedance will meet the requirements set out in a 2024 law, a source from the White House said on Wednesday.

The long-awaited agreement would allow Tiktok to continue operating in the United States, after months of uncertainty and government threats to definitively prohibit the application of social media which has 170 million American users.

Trump said last week, he had entered into an agreement with China, but had little details.

Here is what we know so far.

Why is an agreement negotiated?

The US Congress adopted a law in 2024 during the Biden administration which required that the American assets of Tiktok be transferred to American owners, citing the fears that its US user data is accessible by the Chinese government. Under Chinese law, Byédance would be required to put data on the Americans if the authorities asked, but Tiktok says that he has never received such a request. He also indicates that his American data is stored outside China.

The Trump administration did not apply the law, rather extending the deadline to conclude an agreement three times. Meanwhile, Trump credited Tiktok for helping him win the 2024 elections, and the White House launched an official account last month.

Trump said last Tuesday that an agreement had been concluded, adding: “We have a group of very large companies who want to buy it”. The White House gave bytedance until December 16 to finalize the agreement.

A Chinese trade representative confirmed that the two parties had reached a “basic consensus”.

Trump was discussed the agreement with a telephone call on Friday with Chinese President Xi Jinping, and told journalists that Xi had “approved” the agreement. China, however, has not confirmed this.

Who are investors?

Many details on the new property structure remain vague.

On Saturday, the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Oracle, based in Texas, would be responsible for data and security security. Oracle will also conduct US surveillance of the application algorithm, which has been at the center of the controversy, with American officials warning that it could be manipulated by the Chinese authorities.

Oracle is currently hosting cloud servers that store the Tiktok content recommendation engine and user data in the United States

The Silver Lake Investment Capital Company would also be part of an investor consortium which should take control of American operations.

Sources have told Reuters that Bytedance will keep the largest participation, at 19.9%, just under the 20% threshold of the law.

The reports cited by the Associated Press also appointed American bidders Microsoft, Amazon, the billionaire Frank McCourt and a consortium led by the founder of Onlyfans.

And in an interview broadcast on Fox on Sunday, Trump said that the Rupert Murdoch media magnate and the technology founder Michael Dell could be part of the agreement.

“I think they are going to be in the group. A few others. Truly great people, very important people,” said Trump.

Brett Caraway, professor of media and economics at the University of Toronto, said that the agreement could point out a continuous continuous political change in the social platform ecosystem in the United States

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The technological leaders, including the meta-PDG, Mark Zuckerberg, have put themselves up to Trump since his successful return to the White House, while Elon Musk, who bought Twitter and renamed it X in 2022, campaigned for Trump and worked in close collaboration with his administration for a while.

Murdoch supervises a right -wing media empire, including Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post.

The co-founder of Oracle, Larry Ellison, who briefly overshadowed Musk as the richest person in the world this month, is a longtime friend of Trump and a recent republican donor. In 2022, The Washington Post reported that he had participated in a conference call to develop strategies to challenge the legitimacy of the American presidential election of 2020 after Trump lost.

Ellison was CEO of the company for almost four decades and is now its technology director and executive president.

“I do not know what is the ultimate result of this, but I think there is a lot of trips to the right in the hope of perhaps obtaining a favorable regulatory treatment of the administration, or at least to remain outside the target of Donald Trump and not to be on his side,” said Caraway.

What could that mean for Canada?

Despite his concerns about the agreement, Caraway said the fact that the United States is negotiating with Tiktok could be a lesson for Canada.

Although Canada has not prohibited the application for users, several privacy commissioners have recently published a joint survey concluding that the company had collected sensitive information on hundreds of thousands of Canadians under the age of 13. In 2024, then the head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service David Vigneault advised to use it.

The Canadian government ordered Tiktok to close its Canadian operations in November 2024 following a Bytedance exam, citing unrecognized “national security risks”.

Social media experts and content creators warned at the time that the office closed to Canadian creators by reducing opportunities, support systems, grant programs and sponsorships.

Tiktok has withdrawn sponsorships for several Canadian artistic institutions following the decision, including the Juno Awards and the Toronto International Film Festival. He also reduced the Tiktok accelerator from the National Screen Institute for Aboriginal creators.

“The simple fact of saying that you will simply prohibit the corporate entity in Canada does not seem very productive to me,” said Caraway.

For better or for worse, he says that the American approach seems more fruitful.

“Maybe it’s the Canadian government to reconsider its approach and try to find a more productive work arrangement with the platform.”