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Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!President Donald Trump on Friday extended a deadline requiring China-based ByteDance to sell the U.S. operations of TikTok or face an effective ban in the country, marking the second time he has taken such action.
Trump announced the extension on his Truth Social platform, saying the TikTok deal “requires more work to ensure all necessary approvals are signed.” The extension will “keep TikTok up and running for an additional 75 days,” Trump said. The new extension kicks TikTok’s deadline to mid June.
“We hope to continue working in Good Faith with China, who I understand are not very happy about our Reciprocal Tariffs (Necessary for Fair and Balanced Trade between China and the U.S.A.!),” Trump said in the post.
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Prior to Trump’s decision, ByteDance faced an April 5 deadline to carry out a “qualified divestiture” of TikTok’s U.S. business as required by a national security law signed by former President Joe Biden in April 2024.
ByteDance’s original deadline to sell TikTok was on Jan. 19, but Trump signed an executive order when he took office the next day that gave the company 75 more days to make a deal. Although the law would penalize internet service providers and app store owners like Apple and Google for hosting and providing services to TikTok in the U.S., Trump’s executive order instructed the attorney general to not enforce it.
The day before the law went into effect, Apple and Google removed TikTok from their respective app stores while TikTok temporarily shut down for American users. It came back online the next day after Trump said he would sign an executive order. TikTok returned to the Apple App Store and Google Play in February.
Several parties like Oracle and AppLovin have expressed interest in owning TikTok’s U.S. assets, CNBC’s David Faber reported. Earlier on Wednesday, Amazon made a last-second bid to purchase TikTok, CNBC confirmed.
Another interested party included a group of like Andreessen Horowitz, Blackstone and other private capital firms, who would own roughly half of TikTok’s U.S. operations in a deal, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday. In this deal, TikTok’s current investors like General Atlantic, Susquehanna, KKR and Coatue would be included in the new U.S.-specific TikTok unit, owning about 30% of the business, the report said.
Billionaire Frank McCourt and his Project Liberty consortium are also interested in acquiring TikTok’s U.S. operations, and in March, they announced that Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian is backing the initiative. The startup Perplexity also proposed a deal in which it would merge with TikTok’s U.S. operations, CNBC previously reported.
The Chinese government still needs to approve the deal before it can be completed.
“This proves that Tariffs are the most powerful Economic tool, and very important to our National Security!,” Trump said in the Truth Social post. “We do not want TikTok to ‘go dark.’ We look forward to working with TikTok and China to close the Deal. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
The TikTok-related announcement came after Trump on Wednesday signed a far-reaching “reciprocal tariff” policy at the White House, in which he imposed a 34% tariff rate on China. Coupled with the existing 20% tariffs on Chinese imports, the true tariff rate on China is now 54%.
Trump previously said he may consider reducing China tariffs to help facilitate TikTok deal. The president also said that it’s possible he would give ByteDance another extension if there was not a finalized deal.
Last month, Vice President JD Vance told NBC News that a TikTok-related deal could potentially happen by the April deadline.
“There will almost certainly be a high-level agreement that I think satisfies our national security concerns, allows there to be a distinct American TikTok enterprise,” Vance said at the time.
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