Image Credit: lechenie-narkomanii on Pixabay
President Trump has pushed back TikTok’s ban date again, saying that his administration has made “tremendous progress” on a deal to “save TikTok.”
When Trump took office on January 20, he gave TikTok two and a half months to sell to an American company or face a nationwide ban. The ban was initially set to go into effect on April 5, but once again, Trump has pushed it back with an executive order, setting the new deadline to June 18.
“My Administration has been working very hard on a Deal to SAVE TIKTOK, and we have made tremendous progress,” President Trump posted to Truth Social on Friday. “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.”
While it’s unclear what progress has been made and what approvals need to be signed, Trump likely intends to unveil his solution, “TikTok America,” in the coming days. The yet-to-be-announced plan involves establishing a new company, TikTok America, and distributing ownership designed to prioritize US investors.
TikTok America would be 50% owned by new US investors, 30% by existing investors, and 19.9% by ByteDance, the company that created TikTok. There is no word on who the investors would be, and ByteDance has not offered its input on the matter.
TikTok’s fate has been murky since mid-2020, when the Trump administration had planned to ban the app unless the company divested to a US buyer.
For nearly all of the Biden administration, it seemed as though the ban was off the table. Then, in April 2024, Biden signed a law requiring ByteDance to divest TikTok ownership to a US buyer within nine months.
Days before the ban was set to take effect, then President-Elect Trump promised Americans TikTok would continue operating in the US.
While the ban did take effect on January 19, Trump kept his promise. He officially delayed the ban on January 20, the day he took office.
