In a year marked by escalating tensions and high-stakes negotiations, the fate of TikTok in the United States has become a focal point in the broader contest between Washington and Beijing. With 170 million American users, TikTok—owned by the Chinese tech giant ByteDance—has found itself at the center of not only a trade dispute but also a geopolitical chess match that stretches far beyond social media.
On September 15, 2025, American and Chinese officials announced a “framework agreement” on TikTok’s future, according to Reuters. This followed months of wrangling after the U.S. Congress passed a law in April 2024 mandating TikTok’s ban unless it came under American ownership. Donald Trump, seeking to both appease national security hawks and maintain his own political base, postponed the ban four times and spent nine months brokering a deal to shift TikTok under U.S. corporate control.
The breakthrough, at least on paper, came after a phone call between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping on September 19, 2025. The conversation reportedly gave Xi’s green light for a TikTok sale. Just days later, on September 25, Trump signed an executive order authorizing a takeover by a consortium led by billionaire Larry Ellison, a prominent Trump ally. Vice President Vance, however, quickly acknowledged “some resistance on the Chinese side,” hinting at the unresolved complexities beneath the surface.
Despite the executive order and the framework agreement, the deal’s details remain mired in ambiguity. Chinese state media insist that any TikTok arrangement must comply with Chinese laws and, crucially, that ByteDance would retain control over TikTok’s algorithm. The new U.S.-owned entity would only have access to a licensed copy, with ongoing dependence on China for vital updates—a mechanism that ensures the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) maintains significant leverage. As Angela Huyue Zhang wrote in the South China Morning Post, “China could delay or withhold licensing approvals, using TikTok as yet another bargaining chip. In this way, the platform has been transformed into a powerful instrument of Chinese statecraft.”
For Trump, the TikTok saga is more than a matter of national security or data privacy. According to Vincent Kolo at chinaworker.info, Trump sees TikTok as a potentially powerful propaganda tool and is determined to gain de facto political control over the platform. “Trump wants to gain de facto political control of TikTok and use it as a powerful propaganda service for his rule,” Kolo writes. Yet, the devil is in the details, and both sides appear to be projecting strength while maneuvering for advantage.
The TikTok negotiations are unfolding against a backdrop of unresolved and intensifying trade disputes. U.S. farmers are missing out on billions of dollars in soybean sales to China during the 2025 prime marketing season, with South American suppliers stepping in to fill the gap, Reuters reports. The Cyberspace Administration of China has once again instructed Chinese companies not to purchase Nvidia chips, and China’s export restrictions on rare earth minerals remain firmly in place. Looming on the horizon are tariffs of 145 percent set to take effect in November, further raising the stakes for both economies.
At the heart of the TikTok drama is a deeper game of leverage and concession. According to The Wall Street Journal, Xi Jinping has treated TikTok as a low-cost bargaining chip, seeking to extract far more significant concessions from Trump in return for permitting its sale. Chief among these is a categorical U.S. declaration opposing Taiwan’s independence—a shift from decades of “strategic ambiguity” in American policy. For years, the U.S. has neither endorsed nor opposed Taiwan’s independence explicitly, instead maintaining the status quo and acknowledging China’s “One China Policy” without embracing Beijing’s “One China Principle.”
But Xi is reportedly no longer satisfied with the Biden-era formulation that Washington “does not support” Taiwanese independence. He wants Trump to go further and declare that the U.S. “opposes” it. As The Wall Street Journal notes, the difference between “does not support” and “oppose” is more than semantics—it would signal a significant realignment of U.S. policy, aligning Washington more closely with Beijing’s position and potentially undermining Taiwan’s de facto sovereignty.
There are signs Trump may be willing to accommodate Xi’s demands, at least partially. He has canceled $400 million in military aid to Taiwan, weakened U.S.-led security partnerships in the Indo-Pacific, and scaled back American commitments in the region. U.S. intelligence agencies, according to Firstpost, have assessed that Xi has ordered the Chinese military to prepare for an invasion of Taiwan by 2027, with a possible occupation deadline of 2049—the 100th anniversary of Communist China’s founding.
Domestically, Trump faces mounting pressure from slowing job growth, declining manufacturing, rising inflation, and the specter of recession. The TikTok deal, while symbolically significant, is seen by some analysts as a relatively minor issue compared to the broader U.S.-China contest. “Chinese officials have let the issue fester for years, holding it in reserve as a problem they could one day solve to defuse pressure from Washington. A deal now costs Beijing less than when negotiations started, while still yielding the maximum optics of compromise,” Dimitar Gueorguiev, Director of Chinese Studies at Syracuse University, told The New York Times.
Within China, the TikTok negotiations intersect with internal CCP power struggles. Xi Jinping’s grip on power, once unchallenged, has been shaken by a series of crises: the collapse of the property sector, the fallout from pandemic policies, and a severe economic downturn. Some factions within the CCP, notably military figures like generals Zhang Youxia and Liu Yuan, may be seeking to constrain Xi’s authority or even force his retirement before the next Party Congress in 2027. However, any internal dissent is tempered by the need to maintain unity in the face of U.S. pressure.
Relinquishing TikTok—or even appearing to do so—would be a political concession for Xi and a potential blow to his image as a staunch defender of Chinese interests. Yet, as the structure of the deal suggests, Beijing has ensured it retains crucial elements of control, especially over TikTok’s core algorithm. The arrangement, if it holds, would allow both sides to claim victory while leaving ample room for future disputes.
As September 2025 draws to a close, the TikTok saga remains emblematic of the shifting and often contradictory dynamics of U.S.-China relations. Both governments are eager to avoid looking weak, and both are using the platform as a bargaining chip in a much larger contest for global influence. The coming months are likely to bring further twists, as trade tensions simmer and the unresolved issues surrounding Taiwan, technology, and economic rivalry continue to shape the world’s most consequential bilateral relationship.
In the end, the TikTok deal is less a resolution than a snapshot—a moment in an ongoing drama where neither side is prepared to back down, and every concession is carefully weighed against the broader stakes of power, prestige, and the future of the global order.