posted September 15, 2025 04:19 PM            

(Bloomberg) -- Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the threat of allowing the social media app TikTok to go dark in the US was what ultimately sealed a framework deal in Madrid that would see the American iteration of the platform enter US hands — severing connections with its Chinese parent company ByteDance.

Bessent and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer met with their Chinese counterparts in Spain for several hours of negotiations to finalize the transfer of the app. Talks appeared to falter midday Monday, when the US side considered a list of what it described as “aggressive asks” by the Chinese.

“The Chinese came in with a big list of asks — they described it as compensation — for TikTok,” Bessent said in an interview in Madrid after the talks concluded. “With the leverage that President Trump had given Ambassador Greer and myself, we were able to disabuse them of the notion that we had room for big gives.”

“Basically what they got was the promise of things that won’t happen rather than taking things off,” he said from a suite at the Madrid hotel where the US delegation was staying.

Trump said earlier in a social media post that he and Chinese President Xi Jinping would be speaking on Friday. Bessent said at a press briefing that it will be up to the two leaders “to complete the deal.”