Trump order gives TikTok a 75-day extension after US buyer talks sour over tariffs on China

Video sharing platform TikTok was given a reprieve on Friday after US President Donald Trump announced he would be signing an executive order to keep it running in the United States for another 75 days, giving his administration more time to find a new American owner.

The order was announced as White House officials believed they were nearing a deal for the app’s operations to be spun off into a new company based in the US and owned and operated by a majority of American investors, with current Chinese owners ByteDance maintaining a minority position, according to a person familiar with the matter.

But Beijing hit the brakes on a deal on Thursday after Trump announced wide-ranging tariffs around the globe, including against China.

ByteDance representatives called the White House to indicate that China would no longer approve the deal until there could be negotiations about trade and tariffs, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive details of the negotiations.

The US Congress had mandated that the platform be divested from China by January 19 or barred in the US on national security grounds, but Trump moved unilaterally to extend the deadline to April 5, as he sought to negotiate an agreement to keep it running.

Race to find a US buyer

Trump has recently entertained an array of offers from US businesses seeking to buy a share of the popular social media site, but China’s ByteDance, which owns TikTok and its closely held algorithm, has publicly insisted the platform is not for sale.

But on Friday it became uncertain whether a tentative deal could be announced after the Chinese government’s reversal of its position complicated TikTok’s ability to send clear signals about the nature of the agreement that had been reached for fear of upsetting its negotiations with Chinese regulators.

Trump instead announced he was signing an executive order to extend a 75-day pause on the ban that was set to go into effect on Saturday, the day the original extension was due to end.

The near-deal was constructed over the course of months, with Vice President JD Vance’s team negotiating directly with several potential investors and officials from ByteDance.

The plan called for a 120-day closing period to finalise the paperwork and financing. The deal also had the approval of existing investors, new investors, ByteDance and the administration.

The Trump administration had confidence that China would approve the proposed deal until the tariffs went into effect. Trump indicated on Friday that he can still get a deal done during the 75-day extension.

'Potential solution' derailed by tariff tensions

"My Administration has been working very hard on a Deal to SAVE TIKTOK, and we have made tremendous progress," Trump posted on his social media platform.

"The Deal requires more work to ensure all necessary approvals are signed, which is why I am signing an Executive Order to keep TikTok up and running for an additional 75 days".

Trump added, "We look forward to working with TikTok and China to close the Deal".

A spokesperson for ByteDance confirmed in a statement that the company has been discussing a "potential solution" with the US government but noted that an “agreement has not been executed".

"There are key matters to be resolved," the spokesperson said. "Any agreement will be subject to approval under Chinese law".

TikTok, which has headquarters in Singapore and Los Angeles, has said it prioritises user safety, and China’s Foreign Ministry has said China’s government has never and will not ask companies to "collect or provide data, information or intelligence" held in foreign countries.

Trump’s delay of the ban marks the second time that he has temporarily blocked the 2024 law that banned the popular social video app after the deadline passed for ByteDance to divest.

That law was passed with bipartisan support in the country's Congress and upheld unanimously by the US Supreme Court, which said the ban was necessary for national security.

Fight for control of TikTok's algorithm

If the extension keeps control of TikTok’s algorithm under ByteDance’s authority, those national security concerns persist.

Chris Pierson, CEO of the cybersecurity and privacy protection platform BlackCloak, said that if the algorithm is still controlled by ByteDance, then it is still “controlled by a company that is in a foreign, adversarial nation-state that actually could use that data for other means".

"The main reason for all this is the control of data and the control of the algorithm,” said Pierson, who served on the Department of Homeland Security’s Privacy Committee and Cybersecurity Subcommittee for more than a decade.

"If neither of those two things change, then it has not changed the underlying purpose, and it has not changed the underlying risks that are presented.”

The Republican president’s executive orders have spurred more than 130 lawsuits in the little more than two months he has been in office, but his order delaying a ban on TikTok has barely generated a peep.

None of those suits challenges his temporary block of the law banning TikTok.

The law allows for one 90-day reprieve, but only if there’s a deal on the table and a formal notification to Congress. Trump’s actions so far violate the law, said Alan Rozenshtein, an associate law professor at the University of Minnesota.

Rozenshtein pushed back on Trump’s claim that delaying the ban is an “extension.”

"He’s not extending anything. This continues to simply be a unilateral non enforcement declaration," he said. "All he’s doing is saying that he will not enforce the law for 75 more days. The law is still in effect. The companies are still violating it by providing services to Tiktok.

"The national security risks posed by TikTok persist under this extension," he said.

Calls for TikTok ban law to be repealed

Vitus Spehar, who runs the TikTok account @UndertheDeskNews, said that although they benefit from the extension, they are "concerned about the precedent Trump has set for directing his Department of Justice to not enforce laws passed by Congress".

"I’d like to see a bill passed to repeal the ban, and an end to this back and forth once and for all," they said.

The extension comes at a time when Americans are even more closely divided on what to do about TikTok than they were two years ago.

A recent Pew Research Center survey found that about one-third of Americans said they supported a TikTok ban, down from 50 per cent in March 2023.

Roughly one-third said they would oppose a ban, and a similar percentage said they weren’t sure.

Among those who said they supported banning the social media platform, about eight in 10 cited concerns over users’ data security being at risk as a major factor in their decision, according to the report.