United States President Donald Trump has again extended a deadline for owners of the popular video app TikTok to sell to non-Chinese buyers or be banned in the US.
The executive order announced on Friday would extend the deadline by 75 days. Trump had previously extended a January deadline set out in the law passed by the US Congress last year.
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“My Administration has been working very hard on a Deal to SAVE TIKTOK, and we have made tremendous progress,” Trump posted on the Truth Social network, which he owns.
He added “the deal requires more work to ensure all necessary approvals are signed.”
“We look forward to working with TikTok and China to close the Deal,” Trump said.
The 2024 law, passed with bipartisan support, had mandated that the platform be divested from Chinese technology company ByteDance or barred in the US, citing data harvesting and national security concerns.
Earlier this year, the US Supreme Court ruled that the national security concerns outweighed freedom of speech concerns and allowed the law to stand.
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But on his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order pausing the ban.
The order said the delay would allow the Trump administration “the opportunity to determine the appropriate course forward in an orderly way that protects national security while avoiding an abrupt shutdown of a communications platform used by millions of Americans”.
The Trump administration has since received an array of offers from US businesses seeking to buy the platform, but ByteDance has so far publicly insisted it has no plans to sell the app.
The Reuters news agency has reported the administration is coalescing around a plan for the largest non-Chinese investors in ByteDance to increase their stakes and acquire the app’s US operations.
That would entail creating a new US entity for TikTok and diluting Chinese ownership to below the 20 percent threshold required by US law, according to the report.
For its part, TikTok, which has headquarters in Singapore and Los Angeles, has said it prioritises user safety, and China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said China’s government has never and will not ask companies to “collect or provide data, information or intelligence” held in foreign countries.
Trump has also floated reducing tariffs on China, which will reach 54 percent on April 10, following Wednesday’s reciprocal tariff announcement, to push through a deal with ByteDance.
TikTok is not owned by China’s government and its leaders have denied influence, although critics have pointed to Beijing’s increased controls on the country’s tech industry.
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About half of the US population uses TikTok, making it one of the most popular social media platforms in the country.
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