What We Do and Don’t Know About US TikTok Deal With China

After more than a year of negotiations, the US and China are nearing an agreement to hive off the US operations of social media platform TikTok to a consortium that includes software giant Oracle Corp. If the deal is finalized, it would resolve a persistent issue in Beijing-Washington relations that has become entangled in broader talks over trade.

Under a law signed last year by then-President Joe Biden — the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act — the app’s owner, Beijing-based ByteDance Ltd., was ordered to either sell TikTok US or discontinue the service. The initial deadline was in January, but President Donald Trump extended this multiple times after reentering office, most recently pushing it to Dec. 16.