Unfortunately, the law requiring that TikTok be divested or functionally banned merely requires that the president determine a transaction is a “qualified divestiture,” which he did in his September TikTok EO, but does not require the release of any information about his determination or the transaction itself. The Trump administration and TikTok have not committed to releasing any additional information with Treasury Secretary Bessent, saying in September: “We are not going to talk about the commercial terms of the deal. It’s between two private parties.” Additionally, all of the known primary entities involved with the new TikTok U.S. entity are private companies, not publicly traded ones—with the exception of Oracle—so there is likely to be limited, if any, required SEC filings that provide additional information on the deal. The American people and Congress may never know any details about the TikTok deal or even if it complies with the very law that required the divestment, even once it is consummated.
Only Congress can take action to make information about the TikTok transaction public and, at a minimum, determine if the divestiture and the president’s determination are in compliance with the law it passed. Congress should press the administration, TikTok, and the operators of the new TikTok U.S. entity for the full legal and operational details of the deal—from the “Framework Agreement” referenced in the president’s September EO to any commercial terms cited by Secretary Bessent, signed in December, or finalized in January.
Here are four key reasons why it is important for Congress to seek and make additional information about the TikTok transaction public.
1. The TikTok transaction may not comply with the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act
The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACAA) was passed by Congress on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis and signed into law by President Joe Biden in April 2024, before the U.S. Supreme Court upheld its legality in a unanimous ruling in January 2025. Putting aside President Trump’s refusal to enforce the law, now that it is finally being implemented, Congress should determine if the TikTok transaction complies with the law that it passed.
In particular, there are significant questions over how the deal will handle TikTok’s algorithm, which is considered by many to be the heart of the TikTok application. The latest reports indicate that new owners will “retrain TikTok’s powerful recommendation algorithm on American user data,” and language from the September TikTok EO states that “the divestiture includes intense monitoring of software updates, algorithms, and data flows by the United States’ trusted security partners, and it requires all recommendation models, including algorithms, that use United States user data to be retrained and monitored by those trusted security partners.” But PAFACAA requires a “qualified divestiture” to have no “cooperation with respect to the operation of a content recommendation algorithm.” It is unclear what “monitoring” will be and why it would be required if there’s no cooperation with the retrained algorithm, as is required by the law.
Additionally, reports indicate that TikTok U.S. “will operate as an independent entity with authority over U.S. data protection, algorithm security, content moderation and software assurance, while TikTok global’s U.S. entities will manage global product interoperability and certain commercial activities, including e-commerce, advertising, and marketing.” This seems at odds with the law’s “qualified divestiture” requirement that “precludes the establishment or maintenance of any operational relationship between the United States operations of the relevant foreign adversary controlled application and any formerly affiliated entities that are controlled by a foreign adversary.” The commercial activities of e-commerce, advertising, and marketing would be a significant operational relationship, since they generate nearly all of TikTok’s revenue. Without additional legal, financial, technical, and operational details, it is impossible to determine if this transaction complies with the law.
Unfortunately, as noted above, PAFACAA only requires that the president determine a transaction is a ‘‘qualified divestiture,” which Trump did in the September TikTok EO. Normally, it is presumed that a president is fulfilling their constitutional duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” but President Trump has already repeatedly proven he is unwilling to do so for this particular law. Without any requirement to release additional information about the transaction, the American public and Congress are forced to take the administration’s word that the transaction meets the requirements of the law. Yet in the face of the Trump administration’s repeated violations of this very law, it is not clear they should be given the benefit of the doubt; Congress should seek to independently verify the agreement complies with the law.
Some in Congress have taken notice of this potential conflict between the announced TikTok transaction and PAFACAA. In November, Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) sent a letter to the Trump administration demanding clarification on the TikTok transaction, including the critical questions below—to which he has yet to receive a response:
Please describe in detail the licensing arrangement between ByteDance and TikTok U.S.
a. Will TikTok U.S. be licensing the algorithm from ByteDance?
b. Under such a licensing arrangement:
i. Will ByteDance and TikTok U.S. need to renew the licensing agreement at regular intervals?
ii. Will ByteDance continue providing any operational or technical support to TikTok U.S. with respect to the algorithm?
iii. If ByteDance modifies the algorithm, will those modifications affect the TikTok U.S. algorithm operating in the United States?
c. Please describe how a licensing arrangement eliminates any “operational relationship” between ByteDance and TikTok U.S., as you must declare under the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act to prevent the TikTok ban from taking effect.
The way PAFACAA is crafted, it is unclear whether anyone other than TikTok has standing to sue over the transaction. But if evidence were made public showing that the president failed to comply with the law in his certification of the divestiture, it might be possible to bring a legal challenge to some part of the process; and Congress might have the strongest argument to make that legal challenge. That is another reason why it is important for Congress to use all mechanisms at its disposal to ensure the transaction documents are made public.
2. Key questions remain about the TikTok transaction beyond legal compliance, such as the fate of other ByteDance apps and the U.S. government’s role in the new company
It is critical for the TikTok documents, such as the Framework Agreement, to become public because there are many significant open questions beyond just the divestment’s compliance with the law.
For example, PAFACAA specifically identifies TikTok by name, but it also names ByteDance—TikTok’s parent company—and specifies that any of its applications are a “foreign adversary controlled application” subject to the same ban as TikTok. ByteDance operates numerous applications in the United States, including the popular apps Lemon8 and CapCut. Apple initially removed 11 ByteDance apps from the App Store in January 2025 to comply with PAFACAA before reversing course. President Trump’s September TikTok EO identifies “the Lemon8 application, the CapCut application, and any other application or website duly operated by the new venture.” One hopes that the final TikTok agreement will include a public list of those ByteDance applications included in the deal, but this is not required since any ByteDance applications are subject to enforcement under the law—or the Trump administration’s continued nonenforcement of it.
Another example of an important question is that the September TikTok EO makes reference to “The Attorney General or the Attorney General’s designee shall serve as the United States Government’s representative under the Framework Agreement,” but there is no further elaboration of what the U.S. government representatives’ role is, any specific corporate powers they may be granted, or what information they may be granted access to.
Finally, while the Trump administration has told the press that the U.S. government will not be taking a “golden share” or equity stake in the new TikTok entity, despite having done so in numerous other companies, there will reportedly be a multibillion dollar fee paid to the U.S. government as part of the transaction. No additional information has been provided, and there are numerous questions about such a fee.
Notably, these are just a few examples of the many questions raised by the potential TikTok transaction.
3. The valuation of TikTok U.S. and the selection process for its final investors remain unclear
There are still many unanswered questions about the process that led to this agreement, particularly on how the final valuation was determined and how the investors were selected. Vice President JD Vance floated a $14 billion valuation for TikTok in September, a wildly low price that stunned investors. It is important to understand how that final valuation number was determined, especially given that there were reports of higher bids that were put together. Being able to purchase the app at such a low valuation represents a significant windfall to the investors who were selected.
Equally pressing are questions about TikTok U.S.’ new investors, both who they are and how they were selected. These investors seem to be close to President Trump, especially Oracle and its founder Larry Ellison. During President Trump’s first term and first attempt to shut down TikTok, Oracle became a leading contender to buy the app and then became the U.S. cloud provider for TikTok U.S. Oracle stands to make a tremendous amount of money off of this transaction.
Similarly, the selection of MGX, an investment fund backed by a United Arab Emirates (UAE) sovereign wealth fund, as a lead investor in TikTok U.S. should raise questions. In addition to investments in artificial intelligence (AI) that helped pave the way for the Trump administration to allow Middle East countries to buy advanced AI chips, MGX invested $2 billion in troubled cryptocurrency exchange Binance using the USD1 stablecoin, which was developed by the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial crypto venture, creating tremendous personal financial benefits for both Trump and his family. President Trump later pardoned Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, though Trump and Zhao have said the investment was unrelated to the pardon.
The selection of the investors, as much as valuation, tells a critical story of how this transaction was crafted—a story that should be of interest to both Congress and the American people.
4. It is the responsibility of Congress to defend its authority before it’s too late
Finally, as noted above, President Trump exercised some of his most extensive abuses of executive power in his nonenforcement of the TikTok ban, essentially negating a federal law by EO; refusing repeatedly to enforce it; justifying this with among the most sweeping national security claims ever made by a president; and issuing preemptive nonenforcement guarantees to companies for violating the law. Over the past year, Congress has essentially ignored this significant repudiation of its core constitutional duty, causing lasting institutional damage to itself in doing so. This is the last chance for Congress to assert itself from an executive branch that has ignored its fundamental duty. If Congress lets the TikTok transaction close without exercising its responsibilities, this would be another tremendous surrendering of congressional power to the executive branch.
Congress should take this moment to reflect on this and utilize its full power as a coequal branch to, at least, determine if the president is complying with the law it passed:
- Congress should immediately send letters to the administration demanding that it share existing documents, such as the Framework Agreement, with Congress and commit to releasing those documents to the public—ideally before the deal is signed. It should also ask the administration to commit to releasing the final deal documents publicly.
- Congress should convene hearings ahead of the reported January 22, 2026, deal deadline and call TikTok leadership, the investors of the new TikTok U.S., and the administration officials negotiating the deal to explain how the algorithm retraining and continued commercial relationship with TikTok complies with the legal requirements.
- If the administration resists providing documents, Congress should immediately subpoena the documents from the companies and the administration. Refusals from either the companies or the administration to provide those documents would likely end up with litigation that might also give the courts a chance to consider the administration’s broader refusal to enforce the law for the past year.
- Congress should insert a requirement for the release of the TikTok deal documents in any government funding bill or one of the appropriation bills that are likely to pass in January. The Trump administration, TikTok, and the new TikTok U.S. investors will almost certainly claim that there are confidential requirements in the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) regulations or national security concerns about negotiations that include the Chinese government precluding the release of any further details of the transaction. Congress should make clear these are not acceptable excuses; put the disclosure requirement into law; and, having learned from the administration’s recent noncompliance with disclosures that Congress has required by law, possibly include additional penalties and requirements.
Ideally, congressional leadership would come together to make these demands in a bipartisan and bicameral manner, and given the Trump administration’s recent refusal to comply fully with laws passed by Congress requiring the release of documents, there may be a newfound appetite in Congress to press this administration on required disclosure. However, if congressional leaders refuse to stand up to the administration—and there is considerable precedent to suggest they will not—the questions raised by the TikTok deal should be a top topic for oversight investigations and hearings should a new Congress more interested in challenging the Trump administration come to power.
Conclusion
Congress has a vested interest in the release of the TikTok transaction documents if it wants to determine whether the TikTok deal complies with the law it overwhelmingly passed. The American public also deserves to know who will now own an app that 170 million of them use regularly, as well as how the new TikTok U.S. owners will interact with the former Chinese owners. Critically, PAFACAA does not merely name ByteDance and TikTok as foreign adversary controlled applications but also lays out conditions for other companies and applications to be similarly designated and subject to future divestment or a functional ban in the United States. Without additional details on how the TikTok transaction was determined, there will be no clarity on the fate of future applications subject to the law.
Regardless of one’s views about the TikTok divestment or ban—and there is plenty to be conflicted about—there should be tremendous concern about the president’s refusal to enforce the laws of this country. Congress should compel the disclosure of the TikTok documents not only to ensure that the laws it passes are actually enforced by the president—an arrangement fundamental to the constitutional order of the U.S. government—but also to reassert its duties as the first branch of government in the face of the president’s refusal to execute his required duties.
Congress has a chance to compel this information now, before the deal is completed, to ensure that it complies with the law. Otherwise, that information may not come to light until years later, during oversight hearings before a future Congress.