US negotiation with TikTok ‘depends on China’: Trump

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said the future of TikTok in the United States remains uncertain, noting that China will ultimately play a key role in deciding the app’s fate as negotiations continue.

“I may, I may not. We’re negotiating TikTok right now. We may let it die, or we may, I don’t know. It depends, up to China. It doesn’t matter too much. I’d like to do it for the kids. They like it,” Trump told reporters in New Jersey before returning to Washington.

“I mean, selfishly speaking, I did very well with TikTok, and I got the youth vote. I got numbers that nobody’s ever even come close to in the Republican Party, nobody,” he added.

As per The New York Times, Trump has until September 17 to enforce or delay a law requiring TikTok to be separated from its Chinese owner, ByteDance, or face a ban in the US.

The president has already delayed enforcing the law three times. Congress passed the bipartisan legislation last year to ban TikTok in the country unless it found a non-Chinese owner because of concerns that the social media app’s ties to China made it a national security threat to the US, as per The New York Times.

Talks with China have been more complicated. Trump imposed 145 per cent tariffs on Chinese imports in April, essentially halting trade, before lowering that levy to 30 per cent. China put 10 per cent tariffs on American products.

Last Saturday, China announced that it was opening an investigation into exports of certain microchips that are made in the US. The day before, the US Commerce Department said it was adding Chinese chip companies to a trade blacklist. The moves are expected to put additional pressure on the talks.

The world’s two largest economies have been discussing further tariff reductions and the status of China’s restrictions on shipments of rare earth minerals and magnets critical to US manufacturers. The Trump administration is also concerned that China has stopped buying American agricultural products, threatening the livelihood of soybean farmers.

Bessent has criticised China’s excess industrial capacity, describing its economy as unbalanced, and urged his Chinese counterparts to curb purchases of oil from Russia and Iran.

Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping could meet next month at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in South Korea. Trump has also suggested that he may visit China at some point at Xi’s invitation. (ANI)