Senator Presses Trump for Answers on TikTok Deal

2025 has been a rollercoaster year for TikTok users in the US. At the start of the year, the app was on the verge of getting banned. However, when Donald Trump took up his second term as the President of the United States, he extended the ban’s deadline while he was looking for a way to get ByteDance to sell the app to a US company. But now, US Senator Ed Markey has questions about the TikTok deal that he wants Trump to answer.

Senator wants to question Trump over TikTok deal

A letter Senator Ed Markey sent to Trump over the TikTok deal reads, “Your repeated unlawful extensions of the divestment deadline and vague comments about the deal raise significant questions about whether you have been able to secure an agreement that keeps TikTok online and addresses the national security concerns posed by ByteDance’s ownership of TikTok.”

Markey also raised the question of whether China had actually approved the deal. While the Trump administration claimed that it had, Markey still had questions about the deal. “If TikTok U.S. is licensing the algorithm from ByteDance and retraining it, is this a one-time transfer of the source code, or does TikTok U.S. have to renew it at regular intervals? Will any changes to the algorithm by ByteDance affect the algorithm that is licensed to TikTok U.S.?”

These are legitimate questions. As it stands, we don’t really know too much about the exact specifics of the deal. In fact, several lawmakers that were initially involved with the ban on TikTok have admitted that they themselves aren’t too clear on the deal.

Trump’s TikTok deal

Back in October, Trump was expected to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping to finalize the TikTok deal. The deal hasn’t been fully closed yet, but both sides have reached a framework agreement.

Based on this agreement, ByteDance will spin off TikTok’s US operations to an American-led consortium. This includes investors like Oracle, who will continue to maintain security on the US side of things. The US will also license TikTok’s algorithm, which they will tweak in order to address national security concerns.

But for now, it looks like TikTok has narrowly escaped being completely banned stateside. It remains to be seen if there will be any noticeable changes in the US algorithm once all this is done.

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