TikTok just got another lifeline from the White House, with President Donald Trump set to delay enforcement of the sale-or-ban law by another 90 days.
“President Trump will sign an additional Executive Order this week to keep TikTok up and running,” Karoline Leavitt, White House press secretary, said in a statement. “As he has said many times, President Trump does not want TikTok to go dark. This extension will last 90 days, which the Administration will spend working to ensure this deal is closed so that the American people can continue to use TikTok with the assurance that their data is safe and secure.”
CNN has reached out to ByteDance and TikTok for comment.
It’s been about five months since a law requiring TikTok to be banned in the United States unless it’s sold off by its China-based parent company technically went into effect. But thanks to President Donald Trump’s promises not to enforce the law, neither of those things have happened, aside from an approximately 14-hour blackout in January. Tuesday’s announcement marks Trump’s third extension of the ban.
The announcement means that the app will remain accessible for its 170 million American users despite the legislation that passed last year with bipartisan support over concerns that TikTok’s Chinese ownership poses a US national security risk. And it comes as both the United States and China seek leverage in tense trade talks, in which TikTok appears to have become a bargaining chip.
The TikTok sale-or-ban law went into effect on January 19 after it was signed by former President Joe Biden last year. TikTok briefly took itself offline, sparking outcry from creators, but quickly came back after Trump signed an order delaying the ban’s enforcement by 75 days. It was one of his first acts as president, made in hopes of reaching a deal to keep the app “alive.”
In April, a deal that would have transferred majority control of TikTok’s US operations to American ownership was nearly finalized. But it fell apart after Trump announced additional tariffs on China, forcing the president to announce another 75-day delay to keep the app operational in the United States.
“There are key matters to be resolved. Any agreement will be subject to approval under Chinese law,” TikTok parent company ByteDance said after Trump’s tariff policy stalled progress on the deal in April.
That pause was set to expire on June 19.
Trump’s latest enforcement delay raises questions about the status of a deal that could secure TikTok’s long-term future in the United States. The Chinese government has offered little public indication that it would be willing to approve a sale beyond suggesting that any deal could not include TikTok’s “algorithm,” which has been called the app’s secret sauce.
Tuesday’s announcement comes after the United States and China agreed on a framework to ease export controls, a move that’s expected to ease tensions and prevent further escalation of export and other restrictions between the two countries. It’s not clear whether a TikTok deal is included in the framework, but cooperation between the two sides could make an agreement to transfer control of the app to a US buyer more likely.
Earlier on Tuesday, Trump told reporters that a TikTok deal would “probably” require approval by the Chinese government and said, “I think we’ll get it.”
“I think President Xi will ultimately approve it, yes,” the US president added.
The deal that had been in the making earlier this year would have involved several American venture capital funds, private equity firms and tech giants investing in a company that would control TikTok’s US operations. TikTok’s China-based owner, ByteDance, would have retained a 20% stake in the spinoff company — a key stipulation of the law.
Several other high-profile bidders had also put their hands up to acquire the platform, including a group led by billionaire Frank McCourt and “Shark Tank”-famous investor Kevin O’Leary, Amazon, AI firm Perplexity and a separate group of investors that included YouTube and TikTok star Jimmy Donaldson, known online as MrBeast.
It was Trump who first tried to ban TikTok during his previous administration, but he has said he changed his mind after he “got to use it.” TikTok CEO Shou Chew attended Trump’s inauguration, seated on stage alongside Cabinet secretaries and other tech CEOs.
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