The United States announced Monday that a "framework" deal had been reached with China for the ownership of popular social video platform TikTok, after weekend trade talks between their delegations in Spain.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced the agreement after the latest round of talks between the world's top two economies in Madrid, which also included discussions about their wider trade dispute.

"We have a framework for a TikTok deal," Bessent told reporters, adding it calls for the app "to switch to U.S.-controlled ownership."

He said U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese Premier Xi Jinping would speak on Friday to possibly finalize the deal.

Trump confirmed that in a social media post, where he also said – without directly naming the social media giant – that a deal was reached with a "certain company that young people in our Country very much wanted to save. They will be very happy!"

"We are not going to talk about the commercial terms of the deal," Bessent said. "It's between two private parties. But the commercial terms have been agreed upon."

Chinese officials have yet to confirm Bessent's statement and were not present at the press conference.

During Joe Biden's Democratic presidency, Congress and the White House used national security grounds to approve a U.S. ban on TikTok unless its parent company, ByteDance, sold its controlling stake.

Trump has repeatedly extended the deadline for shutting down TikTok, even though the law allows for just one 90-day reprieve, and only if there's a deal on the table and a formal notification to Congress.

The current extension expires on Sept. 17, two days before Trump and Xi are scheduled to discuss the final details of the framework deal. Although Trump hasn't addressed the forthcoming deadline directly, he has claimed that he can delay the ban indefinitely.

TikTok is one of more than 100 apps developed in the past decade by ByteDance, a technology firm founded in 2012 by Chinese entrepreneur Zhang Yiming and headquartered in Beijing's northwestern Haidian district.

In 2016, ByteDance launched a short-form video platform called Douyin in China and followed up with an international version called TikTok. It then bought Musical.ly, a lip-syncing platform popular with teens in the U.S. and Europe, and combined it with TikTok while keeping the app separate from Douyin.

Soon after, the app boomed in popularity in the U.S. and many other countries, becoming the first Chinese platform to make serious inroads in the West. Unlike other social media platforms that focused on cultivating connections among users, TikTok tailored content to people's interests.

The often silly videos and music clips content creators posted gave TikTok an image as a sunny corner of the internet where users could find fun and a sense of authenticity. Finding an audience on the platform helped launch the careers of music artists like Lil Nas X.

TikTok gained more traction during the shutdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic, when short dances that went viral became a mainstay of the app. To better compete, Instagram and YouTube eventually came out with their own tools for making short-form videos, respectively known as Reels and Shorts. By that point, TikTok was a bona fide hit.

Challenges came in tandem with TikTok's success. U.S. officials expressed concerns about the company's roots and ownership, pointing to laws in China that require Chinese companies to hand over data requested by the government. Another concern became the proprietary algorithm that populates what users see on the app.

Trade talks

The meeting in Madrid was the fourth round of trade talks between United States and Chinese officials since Trump launched a tariff war on Chinese goods in April.

Now, the two governments are planning for a possible summit between Trump and Xi, though nothing has been confirmed. Analysts say there are possible trade bumps that could delay the visit.

In his Truth Social post on Monday, Trump said the meeting in Europe "has gone VERY WELL!" and added: "The relationship remains a very strong one!!!"

Trade tensions escalated sharply earlier this year, with tit-for-tat tariffs reaching triple digits and snarling supply chains.

Both governments later agreed to lower their punitive tariffs, with the United States imposing 30% duties on imports of Chinese goods and China hitting U.S. products with a 10% levy, but the temporary truce expires in November.

The U.S.-China trade truce has been an uneasy one, with Washington accusing Beijing of violating their agreement and slow-walking export license approvals for rare earths, key materials for the automotive, electronics and defense industries.

Nvidia probe

Separately, China on Saturday launched two investigations into the U.S. semiconductor sector.

Beijing opened an anti-dumping probe into some integrated circuit chips originating from the U.S., its Commerce Ministry said in a statement.

The ministry also said in a separate statement that it will launch an investigation into whether the U.S. had discriminated against the Chinese chip sector.

And on Monday, China said an investigation found U.S. chip giant Nvidia had run afoul of the country's antitrust rules, and vowed an additional probe.

The statement did not provide further details about Nvidia's alleged legal violations or the further probe.

Beijing – which announced the investigation in December – is currently engaged in an intense contest with the U.S. for supremacy in the critical field of semiconductors.

Top diplomats and defense chiefs from both nations held back-to-back phone calls last week, which analysts said could mark a step toward a meeting between Trump and Xi.