By Jeff Mason
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday declaring that his plan to sell TikTok's U.S. operations to U.S. and global investors will meet the requirements in a 2024 law that says the short video app will be banned unless its Chinese owners sell it.
The new U.S. company will be valued at around $14 billion, Vice President JD Vance said.
Trump has delayed enforcement of the law until December 16 amid efforts to extract TikTok's U.S. assets from the global
platform, line up American and other investors and win approval from the Chinese government.
"There was some resistance on the Chinese side, but the fundamental thing that we wanted to accomplish is that we wanted to keep TikTok operating, but we also wanted to make sure that we protected Americans' data privacy as required by law," Vance said.
Trump said: "I spoke with President Xi. We had a good talk, I told him what we were doing, and he said go ahead with it."
The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump has credited TikTok, which has 170 million U.S. users, with helping him win reelection last year and has 15 million followers on his personal account. The White House also launched an official TikTok account last month.
"This is going to be American-operated all the way," Trump said.
He added that Michael Dell, Rupert Murdoch and "probably four or five absolutely world-class investors" would be part of the deal.
Republican House lawmakers said they want to see more details of the deal to ensure it represents a clean break with China. "As the details are finalized, we must ensure this deal protects American users from the influence and surveillance of CCP-aligned groups,” said U.S. representatives Brett Guthrie, Gus Bilirakis and Richard Hudson.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason and David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by Chris Sanders and Matthew Lewis)
