Shortly after Monday’s inauguration, President Donald Trump signed an executive order extending the deadline for ByteDance to sell TikTok’s US operations, preventing the app from going black for another 75 days.
The executive order directs the US Attorney General to stop implementing a law that would ban the app and requires companies like Apple and Google to remove it from their app stores. TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Days before the January 19 deadline, Trump suggested he would “save” the plan once he officially takes office. In an interview with Kristen Welker on NBC News on Saturday, Trump said he would give ByteDance more time to find a buyer, but did not explain how he plans to do that. “We have to look at it carefully. It is a very big situation,” he said.
In a letter to Truth Social on Sunday, Trump confirmed that the expansion would be done through an executive order that would allow his administration to negotiate with ByteDance. In his post, Trump said he would pursue a 50 percent partnership with ByteDance, preferably with an American corporation.
“By doing this, we are saving TikTok, keeping it in good hands and enabling it [stay] up,” Trump wrote. “Without US approval, there is no TikTok. With our permission, it is worth hundreds of billions of dollars—perhaps billions.”
ByteDance and TikTok have not publicly responded to Trump’s proposal. At Monday’s signing ceremony, Trump said he thought TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew would “really like it.” Trump said that private companies could participate in financing the negotiations. “I think you have a lot of people who will be interested in TikTok and the United States as partners,” he said.
The executive order itself does not address the divestiture, but instead states that the 75-day suspension is for “an opportunity to determine the appropriate course of action moving forward in an orderly manner.”
The rush to keep TikTok online comes after the company suffered a major setback at the hands of the US Supreme Court. On Friday, a court upheld a law forcing the sale of TikTok to its American owner to avoid a nationwide ban. This decision was taken two days before the law came into force.
Just before midnight on Saturday, TikTok users received a notification warning them that the app is no longer available to US users due to sales or embargo laws. Around the same time Apple and Google removed the app from their app stores, other apps owned by ByteDance, including CapCut, Lemon8, and Marvel Snap, were also taken down. TikTok was down for about 15 hours before the company issued a statement announcing its return.
“In agreement with our service providers, TikTok is in the process of restoring the service. We thank President Trump for providing the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will not face penalties that provide TikTok to more than 170 million Americans and allow more than 7 million small businesses to thrive,” the company said Sunday evening.
The divestiture law has faced outrage from both sides of the aisle. “In Washington DC we are holding meetings trying to remove this ban on TikTok,” wrote Soulja Boy, in a post on X over the weekend. The rapper was in town to perform at the opening party of the crypto industry.
Various American financiers have considered buying the app, including former Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt and former Trump Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. McCourt’s Project Liberty made a formal request after the Supreme Court announced its decision. Elon Musk’s name has also been floated in discussions about a deal with the Chinese government, according to Bloomberg.
On Monday, Trump suggested that he may impose retaliatory tariffs against China if the Chinese government refuses to negotiate an agreement to resolve the US government’s national security issues with TikTok. “I’m not saying I will, but you certainly can,” he said.