TikTok will continue to exist at least for another three months in the United States, as President Donald Trump is set to grant a sale or ban deadline extension for the third time since he assumed office this year. President Trump will issue another Executive Order this week to continue allowing TikTok to operate,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Tuesday.
The widely used video-sharing application was to be banned in the US after the Chinese owner ByteDance declined to sell it to a buyer in the US by a January deadline. TikTok and ByteDance did not respond promptly to BBC requests for comment.
Leavitt explained the 90-day extension would “make sure this deal is closed so the American people can still use TikTok with the confidence that their data is safe and secure. Before Leavitt’s statement, Trump told the BBC he would “probably” grant an extension of the TikTok deadline.
“We’ll likely need to get China approval,” Trump explained. “I think we’ll get it. I think President Xi will end up approving it. When questioned if he has the legal authority to extend the deadline, he replied: “We do.”
Trump’s extension contradicts the desire of Congress, which approved the sale-or-ban bill last year. His predecessor, previous President Joe Biden, signed the bill into law as soon as possible. The law was intended to target fears that TikTok, with 170 million U.S. users, would serve China as a spy and political manipulation tool.
The Supreme Court concurred with a lower court and upheld the law in January just before Trump’s inauguration. The platform went dark for a few hours over the weekend before Trump’s inauguration. TikTok thanked Trump for saving the app after it became accessible again. Trump attempted to compel a sale of TikTok to an American purchaser in 2020, his first term in office.
However, last year, Trump expressed that he enjoyed the app because he felt that it assisted him in winning the 2024 presidential election. I have a nice place in my heart for TikTok, as I beat youth by 34 points,” Trump announced in December, even though the majority of young voters voted for the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.
Trump’s unilateral extensions of deadlines have made some analysts rule out the possibility of a ban ever happening in his presidency. What ban? There is nothing ‘looming’ about the threat of a TikTok ban anymore,” declared Forrester principal analyst Kelsey Chickering. TikTok’s actions also show they’re optimistic about their future because they just launched new AI video features at Cannes this week.”
“Smaller players, such as Snap, will attempt to take share in this “uncertain period,” but they will fail because this next round for TikTok isn’t uncertain whatsoever,” Ms Chickering said. The Trump administration announced in April that the US and China had reached a near agreement that would have put majority ownership of TikTok’s US operations under American control. That agreement has not materialised.
“There are important issues to be addressed,” a ByteDance spokeswoman said then. “Any deal will need to be approved under Chinese law. Trump indicated he would consider it being sold to cloud computing leader Oracle, whose co-founder Larry Ellison has long been close to Trump.
Another group bidding on the platform includes billionaire Frank McCourt, Canadian entrepreneur Kevin O’Leary, and Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian. And the world’s largest YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson – aka MrBeast – has indicated he’s also in the hunt to buy TikTok as part of a different investment group.
