Trump Gives TikTok Another Extension

Donald Trump once again extended TikTok’s deadline to be sold, this time for an extra 75 days. “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 when sharing the news on Truth Social. “This proves that Tariffs are the most powerful Economic tool, and very important to our National Security! We do not want TikTok to ‘go dark.’ We look forward to working with TikTok and China to close the Deal.” ByteDance, the company that owns TikTok, had a deadline to sell the app by April 5 due to a national-security law that Joe Biden signed before leaving office.

The original deadline for sale was January 19, at which point TikTok briefly stopped working and stopped being eligible for download in app stores across Apple and Google phones. Then Trump issued a similar executive order and the app was back to working within 14 hours. Since that initial date, there have been companies reportedly interested in buying the app (like Amazon, OnlyFans, and private-equity firm Blackstone), but nothing has officially happened. Now, ByteDance has until mid-June, specifically Juneteenth, to figure it out.

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