As the world’s two largest economies prepare for a pivotal phone call, the fate of TikTok in the United States and the broader contours of US-China trade relations hang in the balance. On Friday, September 19, 2025, US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are scheduled to speak at 9 a.m. Washington time (9 p.m. in Beijing), a conversation set to determine whether TikTok’s US operations will finally shift from Chinese to American control and whether a fragile trade truce can hold amid persistent tensions.
The call comes after months of political wrangling, legal battles, and high-stakes negotiations that have gripped policymakers, tech investors, and millions of TikTok users. According to Bloomberg, the leaders are expected to review a framework agreement unveiled earlier in the week, which would see TikTok’s US business transferred from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance Ltd., to a consortium of American investors. The deal’s outline, hammered out in recent talks in Madrid between US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, and their Chinese counterparts, would comply with a US law passed in 2024 requiring ByteDance to divest its American TikTok operations or face a ban starting January 19, 2025.
President Trump, speaking at a press conference alongside British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, struck an optimistic tone about the prospects for both the TikTok deal and the broader trade relationship. “We’re pretty close to a deal,” Trump said, as reported by Bloomberg. “We may do an extension with China, but it’s an extension based on the same terms that we have right now, which are pretty good terms.” He emphasized that the TikTok arrangement would be “owned by all-American investors” and “companies that love America,” although he sidestepped questions about whether the app’s algorithm—a critical point of contention—would be included in the transfer.
The framework deal, according to people familiar with the matter cited by Bloomberg, would see TikTok’s US operations acquired by a group including Oracle Corp., Andreessen Horowitz, and Silver Lake Management LLC. Yet, the full scope of the plan remains unclear, with officials on both sides stressing that Trump and Xi must finalize the details in their call. The stakes are high: Trump has estimated the US arm of TikTok could be worth “tens of billions of dollars,” adding, “I hate to see value like that thrown out the window.”
The urgency is compounded by a national security law, signed by Trump’s predecessor and upheld unanimously by the Supreme Court, which mandates ByteDance’s divestment or a ban on TikTok in US app stores. The law, which received overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress, was driven by mounting concerns over TikTok’s data practices and its ties to the Chinese government. As summarized by The Wall Street Journal, these concerns include regular access by TikTok employees in China to US user data, hundreds of TikTok and ByteDance employees with backgrounds in Chinese state propaganda, and legal requirements compelling ByteDance to share data with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) at any time.
Security experts and lawmakers have also highlighted TikTok’s capacity to influence US elections by pushing political messages, its history of tracking US reporters, and its ability to censor or promote news about China without user knowledge. A January 2025 Heritage Foundation op-ed pointed to a monitoring group’s finding that TikTok pushed harmful content on eating disorders and self-harm to “vulnerable teens” every 30 seconds. ByteDance’s corporate structure, which includes a CCP “party committee” and a Chinese government official on its board, has only deepened suspicions in Washington.
Despite these concerns—and his own campaign-trail pledge to ban TikTok—President Trump has issued a series of 90-day waivers delaying the law’s implementation, arguing that a negotiated sale to US interests could resolve national security risks while preserving the app’s immense popularity. TikTok, after all, boasts over 100 million mostly young American users, and Trump has credited the platform with helping his outreach to younger voters during the 2024 election. Still, negotiations have dragged on, largely because ByteDance has resisted relinquishing full control over TikTok’s all-important algorithm and US user data, as required by US law.
Beijing’s stance has been equally firm. During the Madrid talks, Chinese officials reportedly entered negotiations with “aggressive asks” for compensation. The US team, however, signaled it was not interested in “big gives,” with Trump reportedly ready to let the app “go dark” if a satisfactory deal cannot be reached. “If the Trump administration is able to negotiate a true divestment—one in which TikTok fully cedes control of its algorithm and US user data to an American-controlled entity—the administration deserves praise for finding a way to extract the CCP from the phones of over 100 million mostly young Americans,” wrote The Wall Street Journal. “But if Beijing is ultimately unwilling to entertain a true divestment, seeks egregious concessions, or proposes a sham sale that gives the appearance of a divestment but allows Chinese entities to retain control of the data and algorithm, the deal should be rejected, and Trump should follow through on his threat to let TikTok die.”
Friday’s call is about more than TikTok. It unfolds against the backdrop of a fragile trade truce between Washington and Beijing, which has paused a cycle of tit-for-tat tariffs that rattled global markets earlier this year. The current 90-day pause, as Bloomberg notes, is set to expire in early November. Trump has indicated he could extend the truce “based on the same terms,” but trade tensions remain. Recent flashpoints include Chinese authorities’ preliminary finding that US tech giant Nvidia Corp. violated anti-monopoly laws after acquiring Mellanox Technologies Ltd., a move that US officials criticized during talks. Meanwhile, Trump has struck a deal with Nvidia to allow certain chip shipments to China, provided the US government receives a 15% stake of sales.
Beyond the US-China economic rivalry, Trump has also called for allies to increase sanctions on China and India over their purchases of Russian energy, aiming to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin amid the ongoing war in Ukraine. These issues, layered atop the TikTok saga, underscore the complexity of the US-China relationship and the challenges facing both leaders as they seek to balance national security, economic interests, and geopolitical strategy.
As the world watches, the outcome of Friday’s Trump-Xi call could reshape the digital landscape for millions of Americans, redefine the rules of global tech competition, and set the tone for US-China relations heading into a contentious election year. Whether the two leaders can bridge their differences—or whether TikTok will go dark for US users—remains to be seen. For now, all eyes are on Washington and Beijing, as the clock ticks down to a decision that could reverberate far beyond the world of social media.