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The White House says Tiktok will be able to continue its operations in the US for another 90 days, extending the deadline for popular China-owned social media apps and selling stakes in the platform to meet American law.
“President Trump (Donald) Trump will sign additional executive orders this week to get Tiktok to run,” White House press chief Currylin Leavitt said Tuesday. “As he said many times, President Trump doesn’t want Tiktok to go dark.
“This extension will last 90 days. The administration will work to ensure that this transaction is closed, allowing Americans to continue using Tiktok with assurances that data is safe and secure.”
Last year, Congress passed a law to enforce Bytedance, the Chinese owner of Tiktok.
Trump has extended the deadline twice, two times, from January to April and then April to June 19, after committing to “saving” the app and not making any transactions that require sign-offs from China.
Ahead of the April deadline, the White House was spin-off from Tiktoc, establishing a US company, receiving new investments, and locked in a contract that diluted the interests of Chinese investors.
Under the terms of that agreement, investors, including Andreesen Horowitz and Blackstone, owned about half of Tiktok’s US operations, while large existing investors, including Atlantic General, Susquehanna and KKR, held about 30% of the new entities.
The Financial Times previously reported that the White House was considering other potential outside investors, including right-wing media star Tucker Carlson.
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ByteDance told the White House and investors that Beijing is willing to approve the deal, according to one person familiar with the matter. However, after Trump announced tariffs in China and other countries on April 2, the ordinance informed investors that Beijing had revoked its approval. The White House, according to people, waited for trade tensions to ease, US-China, to ease before attempting to revive the deal.
During his first term as president in 2020, Trump moved to block Tiktok, writing that his data collection was “threatened by the Chinese Communist Party to grant Americans access to personal and unique information.”
Trump changed his approach to the platform after using it to reach younger voters in the 2024 election. In May, Trump told NBC that “there is a slightly warmer place in my heart for Tiktok.”
