TMTPOST -- U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday extended a deadline for ByteDance Ltd. to divest from TikTok operations in the country under a sell-or-ban law.
Credit：China Daily
With an executive order on Friday, Trump kept TikTok running for another 75 days prior to the deadline on Saturday. That was the president』s second order to avoid the popular short video platform and application shutting down in the United States. On January 20, his first day in office, Trump issued an executive order to suspend application of the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (the 「Act」) to TikTok temporarily, instructing not to enforce the Act for a period of 75 days.
The Act, which went into effect in April 2024, gives China-based tech giant ByteDance 270 days to divest its U.S. assets including TikTok, otherwise the Chinese tech giant would face a ban on its app being available in U.S. app stores or on U.S. web hosting services. It also grants the White House the authority to prolong this deadline by another 90 days if the president deems that progress has been made towards a sale.
In a post on his social media Truth Social, Trump announced his further extension and explained that his move was made to make more time for a deal to save TikTok secured. 「My Administration has been working very hard on a Deal to SAVE TIKTOK, and we have made tremendous progress. The Deal requires more work to ensure all necessary approvals are signed, which is why I am signing an Executive Order to keep TikTok up and running for an additional 75 days,」 said Trump in the post.
Trump said his government looks forwad to working with TikTok and China to close the deal, though acknowledged Beijing is 「not very happy about our Reciprocal Tariffs」, adding that these new tariffs are necessary for 「fair and balanced trade」 between the two nations. While expressing his willingness to aviod TikTok 「go dark」, Trump stressed tariffs are most powerful economic tool and very important to U.S. national security.
ByteDance has been under discussion with the U.S. government, and has not reached any deal yet as two parties still have differences on many key matters, the company said in a statement posted on Chinese social media Weibo. Any agreement has to go through relevant review process, it added, referring to the approval under Chinese law.