Closing post
Time to wrap up….
Washington and Beijing appear to have struck a deal on the future of the US operations of Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok.
Jamieson Greer, the US trade representative, said on Monday that Washington and Beijing have struck a framework agreement on transferring TikTok to US-controlled ownership.
Speaking after emerging from negotiations with Chinese officials, Scott Bessent said the deal was coming but declined to reveal the commercial terms.
“We have a framework for a TikTok deal,” the treasury secretary told reporters after coming out of high-level talks in Madrid.
“We’re not going to talk about the commercial terms of the deal. It’s between two private parties, but the commercial terms have been agreed upon.”
The framework agreement is a breakthrough in the long-running dispute over TikTok’s ownership, which has raised national security concerns in Washington over the app’s Chinese parent company ByteDance. In April 2024, Joe Biden signed legislation that gave ByteDance nine months to sell the platform to a US-approved buyer or face a total ban – a deadline that Donald Trump has repeatedly extended.
Trump hinted that a deal had been done, posting on his Truth Social site that a deal had been reached ‘on a “certain” company that young people in our Country very much wanted to save.’
Trump also called for US companies to stop reporting quarterly results, arguing that shifting to publishing figures twice a year will save them cash and let executives focus on their businesses.
Tensions between the US and China had appeared to escalate this morning, when a Beijing regulator claimed Nvidia had breached antitrust rules.
Tech company Alphabet’s market capitalisation has surged above $3tn for the first time today, joining Nvidia, Microsoft and Apple in the $3tn club.
Shares in Tesla have jumped 6%, after a filing showed that chief executive Elon Musk bought about $1bn of the electric-vehicle maker’s shares last week.
Updated
Alphabet hits $3tn market capitalisation
Elsewhere in the technology world, Google’s parent company’s value has hit a new high.
Alphabet’s market capitalisation has hit the $3tn level for the first time, with its shares up almost 4% in early Wall Street trading.
Alphabet $GOOG
— Loris Dalleau (@Loris_Dalleau) September 15, 2025
$3 000 000 000 000 de capitalisation 🔥 pic.twitter.com/kP5BxfJksY
The rise comes amid a wider rally in artificial intelligence-linked companies.
Alphabet also learned earlier this month that it won’t be forced to sell its Chrome browser.
