Chinese-owned company ByteDance is getting another 90 days to figure out how to separate its American user base of TikTok and sell the business to an American company, even though there's been no movement on this since Trump announced his tariffs.
The situation has not changed vis a vis TikTok still operating technically outside of the law, following a bipartisan bill that passed through Congress and took effect earlier this year. But President Trump doesn't want to be the president who got TikTok shut down, and he claimed back in January that he was going to save the app somehow, and that a deal would be struck to have it, or part of it, sold to a US company.
This was always going to be a tough if not an impossible sell, as industry folks have been saying from the get. ByteDance doesn't want to sell its most popular app, the Chinese government likely wouldn't even let them do so, and separating out the app's American users and making sure their data is securely in the hands of an American company might be technically impossible at this point. Also, that ship has sailed — they have all that user data!
But now, in the third delay to date, President Trump has signed an executive order giving the situation another 90-day extension, as CBS News reports.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt issued a statement to the press saying, "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."
Reportedly, there was a deal taking shape back in March, before another 75-day delay was announced by Trump, to spin off TikTok's US operations into a new company which would be owned primarily by American investors. This deal fell through when Trump announced his sweeping tariffs in early April, and China has not backed down in its stance that there is no deal until the tariff stuff is resolved.
The law passed by Congress was upheld by the Supreme Court in January, and congressional leaders still seem eager to see the situation resolved.
"The courts have been really clear on this. I think we ought to enforce the law," said Senator Josh Hawley, Republican from Missouri, speaking to reporters earlier this month, per CBS.
