Bessent says TikTok ban threat won framework agreement with Chinese

The TikTok logo is seen on a mobile phone in front of a computer screen which displays the TikTok home screen. (AP-Michael Dwyer/THE CANADIAN PRESS)

MADRID — U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the threat of a TikTok shutdown led Chinese negotiators to abandon demands for tariff concessions in return for the social media app divestment and allowed reaching a framework agreement in talks in Madrid on Monday.

The commercial terms of the agreement will preserve U.S. national security interests and the mobile app’s “Chinese characteristics,” he said, adding that the next U.S.-China talks were likely to come before a Nov. 10 deadline for the expiration of the countries’ tariff truce and could result in another 90-day extension.

Bessent told Reuters and Bloomberg in a joint interview in Madrid on Monday that Chinese negotiators went to the talks there with a long list of “compensation” demands for a TikTok deal, including rolling back Trump’s latest tariffs, past duties and U.S. technology export controls.

“They didn’t want it to close. They didn’t have proper calibration or framing of the president’s willingness to let TikTok go dark,” Bessent said of the Chinese delegation in Madrid. “And I think we changed their framing.”

He said U.S. President Donald Trump had given him and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer wide negotiating authority and they “disabused them of the notion that we had room for big gives,” Bessent said.

Rather than agree to remove existing tariffs and trade policies, the U.S. side agreed to refrain from taking certain future steps, Bessent said. “So basically, what they got was the promise of things that won’t happen rather than taking things off.”

He declined to be specific about the TikTok concessions, adding that there were also “procedural” requests by China that were met.

A source familiar with the Madrid talks said another factor in persuading the Chinese side was a message from the U.S. team that failure to reach a TikTok framework deal in Madrid would have taken a potential meeting this fall between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping off the table.

Bessent declined to discuss the commercial terms of the deal or the disposition of TikTok’s core algorithm, but said the U.S. side is “quite comfortable with the national security aspects of the agreement.”

Bessent said the terms will preserve the “Chinese characteristics” of TikTok, one of China’s top global brands, without specifying these provisions of the commercial terms.

“They’re interested in Chinese characteristics of the app, which they think are soft power,” Bessent said. “We don’t care about Chinese characteristics. We care about national security.”

He said that the app in China is more focused on education, whereas in the United States, TikTok is more entertainment oriented, or “digital sugar” for users.

Just ‘trade meetings’

Bessent also said he did not know where the U.S.-China trade relationship was headed after four major meetings in four months in Geneva, London, Stockholm and Madrid. He declined to give the process a name, as past administrations have done, such as the Obama-era Strategic and Economic Dialogue, saying they were simply “trade meetings.”

“We’re moving towards something, we’re not sure where it’s going to end up,” he added.

Asked when there would be progress on core U.S. demands that China rebalance its economy away from exports towards more consumption, Bessent said: “We keep digging into the core issues and we keep doing a 90-day roll” of the tariff deadlines.

These extensions can still be useful, he said, by keeping U.S.-China trade engagement going.

(Reporting by David Lawder and Aislinn Laing; editing by Inti Landauro and Richard Chang)