The TikTok Signing Was Good Theater But Only the First Act
We’re still a long way from locking up a deal to wrestle the US operations from under Chinese control.
It’s a start.
Photographer: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
We can credit President Donald Trump’s showmanship for making Thursday’s declaration on the future of TikTok look like something it wasn’t. It was not, as some headlines seemed overly eager to suggest, the long-awaited signing of a deal to wrestle the video app’s US operations from China’s ByteDance Ltd. Instead, it was the formalizing of what Trump hopes the deal will be — China permitting.
From behind the Resolute Desk, Trump told reporters that he’d had a “very good talk” with Chinese Premier Xi Jinping about that app and that “he gave us the go-ahead.” We’ve heard similar language before, for months now, and yet here we are. Still, it’s fair to say at least (and at most) that the end of TikTok’s legal limbo in the US has never been nearer.