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Tiktok: The Unfinished Deal: Joyful Breakthrough or Looming Breakdown?

  • Writer: Pranita Murali
    Pranita Murali
  • 9 hours ago
  • 7 min read

2025 has been an intense year for trends, especially for consumer products such as the Labubus that everyone seems to want. Well, to the sadness of a lot of US customers, these products might not be available in the near future, with the possibility of furthering tensions between China and the US between President Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. Recently, these tensions have also extended past physical goods. They now encapsulate the media realm as well, with growing concerns about one of the most popular social media platforms of our time, TikTok. As the debate gets more heated surrounding its ownership in the near future, the decision could make an impact on the economy on a much larger scale, affecting daily lives of citizens in the US.



As seen in the image above, Tiktok has been consistently increasing in growth, with revenue generated of $7,285 mm in 2025, growing at an incredible rate from 2017 (Curry, 2025). From these numbers, it is safe to make the claim that Tiktok has a hold on the minds of young and old people all over the world, but especially in the US as one third of US adults use Tiktok and 56% of young adults use this platform (Bestvater, 2024). Recently, there have been talks surrounding changing Tiktok’s ownership, by reducing ByteDance, their major shareholder based in Beijing's, share, with them only less 20% of total stake in the company while US investors such as Oracle and Dell technologies will have majority of the shares in the company(Yang et al., 2025), valuing the overall deal at approximately $14 billion (Mason et al., 2025). Tiktok, as the fastest growing and most sought after social media platform, might be the tying piece that keeps China and the US together through this deal or the straw that breaks the camel’s back, plunging both countries into social and economic turmoil.


We should first analyze the roots of this deal. In April 2024, former President Joe Biden of the United States signed a bill giving ByteDance only nine-months to get a US approved buyer or the platform would be shut down in the country, citing concerns over national security. This raised a lot of outrage amongst the general public, as most are either avid users or content creators. TikTok itself even spoke out against this decision, stating that it is “unconstitutional” and a restriction of free speech for the government to enact this regulation. After President Trump took office, even though he originally stated in 2022 that he would not support this deal, he was more inclined to help it pass after coming back to office in 2025 to let the app continue to flourish on US soil (MacMahon et al., 2025).


To begin, President Trump has multiple reasons as to why he wants this deal to succeed. As previously mentioned, he explicitly states that the youth owe him for saving this platform, as that was a huge reason he decided to pay attention to this issue because it is a large part of the adolescent and adult lifestyles in the US (Bragg, 2025). It brings up the question, though, about if following the wants of the masses is the best decision as a national leader. To add on, According to the White House, the government-issued publisher is viewing this deal as a method of President Donald Trump being able to protect the best interests of the citizens of the United States. The article specifically cites the claim that President Trump is looking to emphasize the security and privacy needs of the citizens, and this deal is an example of those actions. It will put the moderation decisions under US based corporations, instead of storage of consumer data from a foreign entity instead, thereby being able to reduce the risk of sensitive information leakage (The White House, 2025). This raises the query, however, about the risk of the unilateral and unwavering trust President Trump has put on US-based companies, specifically the fact that there is no full guarantee of the claim that security will be impenetrable if TikTok is owned primarily by US corporations, such as when looking at previous precedents like the US-based company of Facebook where there has been major data leaks in 2021. In addition, the author also states the benefit of this decision for the entirety of the US economy, citing that it would benefit content creators based in the United States who make a living off of Tiktok and how other organizations rely on TikTok for advertising as well (The White House, 2025). Once again, there could be a downside to this claim, as this lack of Chinese influence on a platform developed in China could result in tensions between China and the United States, resulting in an even more arguably negative impact on the economy if trade between both countries becomes non-existent, mainly due to the fact that China is one of the biggest consumers of US goods and vice versa. Also, if the deal is to be enacted, there will be a new algorithm established based on the old one that is currently operating, which could disgruntled and heavily upset users who are used to and prefer the previous format of the platform (Yang et al., 2025).


To properly understand this deal and its possible effects, it is imperative to analyze how this claim of mounting tensions in the near future is not improbable or unlikely. President Trump has very publicly started how China is “on board” for the deal, but the Chinese Foreign Ministry has stated that they “respects the wishes of the company and is pleased to see the company conduct commercial negotiations and reach a solution that complies with Chinese laws and regulations and balances interests, all while adhering to market rules”(Yang and Sellers, 2025), which implies a very neutral, if not slightly negative and warning tone to the US, implicitly stating that the Chinese interests are at the forefront for them in this deal and they could pull out if they think it is damaging to them in any way. Also, sources have described that ByteDance needs Beijing’s approval to sell app and the Chinese gov now has to issue export license for Tiktok algorithm (Macmahon et al., 2025) so, currently, it is safe to assume that the basis of this deal is somewhat on shaky ground with no proper decision set in place by both parties.


Now, going back to how a lack of TikTok can affect the economy, there are a lot of aspects to consider, as this deal is larger than a singular change in ownership for one singular platform. For example, a very large part of 2025 was the back and forth between Xi and Trump, who were locked in a trade war until October 30th, when they decided to halt this ongoing conflict. President Trump enacted 145% tariffs in April 2025, marking the start of a cold feud between China and the US. China’s economy ended up expanding as they ramped up policies and restrictions on car manufacturing products and clean energy as they have a near monopoly of those resources, resulting in a direct and immobilizing hit to the car corporations in the US, such as Ford (Wakabayashi et al., 2025). As seen through this previous precedent, it could be logically assumed that if this TikTok deal were to implode or even not meet sufficient expectations on

either side, there would be dire consequences with a direct reignition of the trade wars on both sides and the US bearing the brunt of the burden. In addition, this deal is very volatile and not stable, as mentioned before, so it is sensitive to many shifts on the government and macroeconomic level.



As shown above, President Xi of China was seen meeting up with Prime Minister Modi of India recently, which was the first rare sighting in almost 7 years of any interaction between the heads of these two countries that were previously at odds. President Xi spoke very favorably about the outcome of this interaction, exclaiming how he wants to have amicable ties and help China grow with India in the future (Mccarthy et al., 2025). This could pose a problem in this TikTok deal, as recently President Trump placed tariffs on India at being an increase of 25 more for the country’s usage of Russian oil and gas (Shalal et al., 2025). Due to President Trump’s current volatile standing with India, this view of camaraderie from India and China could cause distrust or a push back from the US side for this TikTok deal.

To conclude, essentially this entire article boils down to one key message: the US should tread carefully when making decisions regarding this deal, as one small word or action can shake economies. No country is a solid island that solely deals and solidifies its economy on only their citizens as their consumer base. Each nation brings something to the table that the other nations want, resulting in trade negotiations and each country dealing with imports as well as exports. This allows nations to expand, grow, and develop, but it hinges on interactions and deals such as this TikTok deal, which is largely between governments and can decide the relationship between China and the US, thereby affecting their economy and the livelihood of their citizens with the outcome of this deal. To all the Labubu lovers out there, I recommend you sit tight and hope that this TikTok deal is extremely successful, otherwise I fear that the toy collection might have to stop here.



References:


Bestvater, S. (2024, February 22). How U.S. Adults Use TikTok. Pew Research Center. Retrieved December 1, 2025, from


Bragg, J. (2025, October 6). Trump tells viewers he "saved TikTok" in new video. Axios. Retrieved December 1, 2025, from


Curry, D. (n.d.). Home App Data TikTok Revenue and Usage Statistics (2025). Business of Apps. Retrieved December 1, 2025, from https://www.businessofapps.com/data/tik-tok-statistics/


Jamali, L. (2025, September 30). Trump TikTok deal: Who might own the app and how would it work? BBC. Retrieved December 1, 2025, from


Mason, J., Chmielewski, D., Shepardson, D., & Sophia, D. (2025, September 26). Trump signs order declaring TikTok sale ready and values it at $14 billion. Reuters. Retrieved December 1, 2025, from https://www.reuters.com/world/trump-signs-order-declaring-tiktok-sale-plan-meets-us-re quirements-2025-09-25/


McCarthy, S., Gan, N., & Mogul, R. (2025, August 31). Xi and Modi talk friendship in a ‘chaotic’ world as Trump’s tariffs bite. CNN. Retrieved December 1, 2025, from https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/31/china/india-china-xi-modi-meeting-intl-hnk


Rappeport, A., Wakabayashi, D., & Chang Chien, A. (2025, November 23). U.S. and China Reach Deal to Temporarily Slash Tariffs. The New York Times. Retrieved December 1, 2025, from https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/12/business/china-us-tariffs.html?searchResultPositio n=4


Ruwitch, J. (2025, September 25). Trump advances TikTok deal with new executive order. NPR. Retrieved December 1, 2025, from


Shalal, A., & Kumar, M. (2025, August 6). Trump imposes extra 25% tariff on Indian goods, ties hit new low. Reuters. Retrieved December 1, 2025, from


The White House. (2025, September 25). Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Saves TikTok While Protecting National Security. The White House. Retrieved December 1, 2025, from https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/09/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-sav es-tiktok-while-protecting-national-security/


Yang, A., & Sellers, S. (2025, September 26). Trump signs executive order on TikTok deal: what to know. NBC News. Retrieved December 1, 2025, from

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