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President Trump said he will begin talks with China in coming days on the sale of TikTok.
“We pretty much have a deal,” Trump told reporters late Friday. “I think we’re gonna start Monday or Tuesday . . . talking to China, perhaps President Xi [Jinping] or one of his representatives, but we pretty much have a deal.”
The White House will likely need China to approve such a deal regarding the video-sharing, social-media platform, added the president.
Trump made the announcement after The Post’s Charles Gasparino earlier Friday reported the commander-in-chief had found a buyer for the controversial Chinese-owned short-video app but his real problem is with the seller.
TikTok is being used as a pawn in the US-Chinese trade negotiations by Beijing, which knows Trump wants the app to remain operating in the United States, sources said.
There will be no sale of TikTok to American investors — a move needed to conform to a US law — until the Chinese president is confident he has extracted as much as he can in terms of a favorable trade deal with the White House, added the sources.
Trump last month signed an executive order to extend the deadline to Sept. 17 for TikTok’s China-based parent company ByteDance to divest TikTok’s assets in the United States.
It was the third such extension since Trump returned to the White House in January.
In April, a group of wealthy investors and tech honchos were poised to place a bid with China to buy the app’s US-based operations until Trump launched a trade war against Beijing, hitting China with 145% tariffs on imported goods.
That number has since been lowered as both sides negotiate other trade issues as part of a broader deal.
When asked how confident he is that China will agree to a deal, the president said, “I’m not confident, but I think so. President Xi and I have a great relationship, and I think it’s good for them. I think the deal is good for China, and it’s good for us.”
Congress voted overwhelmingly last year to ban TikTok if ByteDance wouldn’t divest — via a 79-18 Senate vote and a 360-58 House landslide. Then-President Joe Biden signed the act.
Trump halted the implementation of the ban on his first day in office — issuing an initial 75-day extension.
Trump was skeptical of TikTok as a Chinese data-collection front during his first term, but came out against the ban after most major US-owned social media and content platforms, including Facebook, Twitter and Google-owned YouTube, banned him following the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
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