Under an executive order on Thursday, United States President Donald Trump granted TikTok’s Chinese owner, Beijing-based ByteDance another 90 days to sell the short-form video app to an American owner.
Trump’s third deferral of the 2024 law requiring the Chinese-controlled video app to be sold or shut down for national security reasons – effective 19 January - means it can continue to be available to more than 170 million American users and 7.5 million U.S. businesses.
According to the 2024 statute, the president is authorised to issue a one-time enforcement extension of up to 90 days if he certifies to Congress that a “binding legal agreement” is in place leading to TikTok’s sale.
However, what remains unclear is whether that certification has been made and/or if other laws permit further enforcement delays.
The app briefly went offline ahead of Trump’s inauguration earlier this year. However, once Trump signalled his plans to keep the app running in the U.S., TikTok resumed functioning.
What appears to have curried Trump’s decision to extend a reprieve to TikTok is the highly addictive social media platform’s ability to reach young voters.
This is an about-face from Trump’s first term in office when he attempted to close down the app after national officials concluded it could harvest sensitive data from American users.
However, an executive order by Trump during his first presidency was later overturned by the courts.
This time around, Trump expects Chinese President Xi Jinping to be amenable to a deal to sell the wildly popular app if a buyer comes forward. However, ByteDance does not appear interested in selling TikTok.
TikTok has vigorously denied that its app poses any security concerns to the U.S. and claimed that American data is not stored in China.
Meanwhile, following the TikTok ban last year, American users looked to replace it with Chinese social media app RedNote.
It’s understood that American users expressed indifference to China accessing their data.
While some potential TikTok suitors circled TikTok earlier this year, including Amazon, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and artificial intelligence search engine startup Perplexity AI, no deals were forthcoming after sweeping tariffs were placed on China.
In April 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld then-President Joe Biden's law banning the app unless it is sold to an American owner.
