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 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 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.
(Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by Chris Sanders and Matthew Lewis)
