Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), chair of the House Select Committee on China, said Friday that he has requested an “urgent” briefing from the administration over the deal President Trump approved to keep TikTok available in the U.S.
Moolenaar, who previously voiced concerns about whether a deal would leave the platform reliant on a Chinese-owned algorithm, said that he will be “conducting full oversight” over the agreement.
“ByteDance has shown time and again that it is a bad actor, and the Chinese Communist Party’s [CCP] ultimate goal is to see America divided and weakened,” he said in a statement. “That is why, on an overwhelming bipartisan basis, Congress required ByteDance to divest control of TikTok.”
Lawmakers passed a law in 2024 requiring TikTok’s China-based parent company ByteDance to divest from the app or face a ban on U.S. networks and app stores. The measure sailed through Congress amid growing bipartisan concern about Beijing’s potential ability to access Americans’ user data and manipulate their feeds.
But the law, which was set to go into effect in January, has remained on hold for nine months as Trump has repeatedly delayed enforcement in hopes of reaching a deal to keep TikTok available in the U.S.
Administration officials revealed last week that they had reached a “framework” of a deal following talks with China that would see TikTok spun off into a new U.S. entity, majority owned by U.S. investors.
Trump signed an executive order Thursday putting his stamp of approval on the deal, declaring that the terms of the agreement fulfill the requirements for a divestiture under the law.
“Transitioning to a majority American-owned entity would mark an important step in that process that could mitigate some of the ByteDance threat depending on the details, but divestment was not the law’s only requirement,” Moolenaar said Friday.
“The law also set firm guardrails that prohibit cooperation between ByteDance and any prospective TikTok successor on the all-important recommendation algorithm, as well as preclude operational ties between the new entity and ByteDance,” he added.
Under the agreement, ByteDance will maintain a stake under 20 percent in TikTok. Oracle, which is also taking a stake in the new U.S. entity, will serve as a security provider and retrain a copy of the algorithm.
Vice President Vance seemed eager to dispell worries about the recommendation system Thursday, noting that the new U.S. company ”will have control over how the algorithm pushes content.”
Moolenaar expressed concerns about the deal last week amid reports that ByteDance would be licensing the algorithm to the new TikTok. He warned at the time that such an agreement “could allow continued CCP control or influence.”
