WASHINGTON — TikTok's Chinese owner, ByteDance, signed binding agreements with three major investors to sell just over 80 percent of the company's U.S. assets to American and global investors to avoid a U.S. government ban, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew told employees on Thursday. The deal is a major step toward resolving years of uncertainty about the short video app's future in the United States since August 2020, when ‍then President Donald Trump first tried unsuccessfully to ban the app that is now used regularly by more than 170 million Americans. The details of the deal are in line with one unveiled in September, when Trump delayed until January 20 enforcement of the law that bans the app unless its Chinese owners ‍sell it amid efforts to extract TikTok's U.S. assets from the global platform. He also ‍declared that the deal met the terms of the divestiture requirements. The company told ‌employees on Thursday that ByteDance and TikTok signed binding agreements with three managing ‍investors: Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX, to form a new TikTok U.S. joint venture named TikTok USD