President Trump said Friday that he will sign an executive order to extend the deadline for China-based tech company ByteDance to sell TikTok to a U.S. buyer. ByteDance later acknowledged in a statement that it was working with the U.S. government on a sale but that an agreement had not been reached.
"My Administration has been working very hard on a Deal to SAVE TIKTOK, and we have made tremendous progress," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "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."
The popular social media platform faced a possible ban in the United States for the second time this year if ByteDance did not strike a deal to sell partial ownership by April 5.
Trump's decision to extend the deadline comes two days after Amazon and a startup run by Tim Stokely, the founder of adult content site OnlyFans, both placed last-minute bids to purchase TikTok. In an interview with Fox News on Thursday, Vice President JD Vance, who is in charge of overseeing the TikTok sale with national security adviser Michael Waltz, said he believed a sale would be reached before the April 5 deadline.
"I think that we're in a good place," Vance said in an interview on Fox & Friends. "We're going to keep on working at it."
On Jan. 19, TikTok temporarily went dark for its 170 million U.S. users, after months of fighting the federal government's demand that it separate from ByteDance due to national security concerns. But the outage lasted only a few hours before access to the app was restored, according to a message displayed to users, "as a result of President Trump's efforts."
In one of the first official acts of his second term in the White House, Trump signed an executive order delaying the enforcement of the TikTok ban for 75 days and proposed that the U.S. should own 50% of the platform, in what he called a "joint venture."
TikTok's future in the U.S. has been uncertain since April 2024, when then-President Joe Biden signed a law passed by Congress requiring the popular app to be sold or banned in the U.S. The Biden administration and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have argued that TikTok's Chinese ownership presents a potential threat to national security, and the Supreme Court agreed, moving to uphold the ban on Jan. 17 of this year.
It's not clear whether this latest extension of the deadline for a sale would violate the law signed by Biden. The law prohibits TikTok from operating in the U.S. if it continues to use algorithms controlled by ByteDance. However, it could be hard to challenge Trump's decision to push back the deadline again in court, since the law also grants some flexibility to the president over its enforcement, CNN reported.
Is ByteDance interested in selling TikTok?
TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, acknowledged in a statement on Friday that it was still seeking a "potential solution" for TikTok U.S. after Trump announced he planned to extend the deadline.
"ByteDance has been in discussion with the U.S. Government regarding a potential solution for TikTok U.S. An agreement has not been executed. There are key matters to be resolved. Any agreement will be subject to approval under Chinese law," the statement read.
ByteDance previously said it had no plans to sell TikTok, citing in part the Chinese government's opposition to a sale. However, on Jan. 20, a spokesperson for China's Foreign Ministry, Mao Ning, told reporters that the decision "should be independently decided by companies in accordance with market principles."
Two days later, General Atlantic CEO Bill Ford, who is a board member and a major investor in ByteDance, said at an Axios event in Davos, Switzerland, that he believed ByteDance would soon reach a deal to sell the app.
"We'll get on with it, as soon as maybe the end of the week, in terms of negotiating what might work,” Ford said. “The Chinese government, the U.S. government and the company and the board all have to be involved in this conversation."
Who has talked about buying TikTok?
Multiple outlets have reported that the Oracle Corporation is the frontrunner to buy TikTok. Oracle is one of the world's largest software companies and one of the three major backers behind Trump's $500 billion AI infrastructure investment. TikTok has worked with Oracle to store and process user data in the U.S. since 2020. When asked about the TikTok deal at a press conference on Jan. 21, Trump said, referring to Oracle's cofounder and chief technology officer Larry Ellison, "I'd like Larry to buy it." But Trump clarified on Jan. 25 that he had not spoken directly to Ellison about the sale.
Multiple American companies and entrepreneurs have also offered to buy TikTok from ByteDance, including Frank McCourt, the former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers and the founder of Project Liberty, who pulled together a group of investors in December. One of those investors was Shark Tank host Kevin O'Leary, who told Yahoo Finance that the group is "willing to pay up to $20 billion" for the app. Project Liberty announced on Jan. 9 that it had formally submitted a proposal to ByteDance to buy TikTok.
A creator on YouTube, Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, posted on Jan. 15 that he had met with several billionaires and had "an offer ready" to buy TikTok as well. A spokesman for Donaldson, Matthew Hiltzik, told Yahoo News on Jan. 23 that "while several potential buyers are in ongoing discussions with Jimmy, he has no exclusive agreements with any of them."
Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal reported that Chinese government officials discussed selling TikTok to Elon Musk, who also owns X. However, Musk said at an economic summit in late January that he did not have an interest in buying the app.
"I've not put in a bid for TikTok, and I don't have any plans for what would I do if I had TikTok," Musk said in a video released on Feb. 8 by the Welt Group, which hosted the summit. He later said that he doesn't use the platform and isn't familiar with it.
“I do not acquire companies in general, it’s quite rare,” he continued, clarifying that his 2022 acquisition of X, formerly known as Twitter, was "unusual."
Companies like Oracle, Walmart and Microsoft expressed interest in buying TikTok back in 2020. Trump told reporters on Jan. 27 that Microsoft was once again in talks to buy TikTok, although Microsoft never publicly commented on the matter. Back in 2021, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella called the failed deal the "strangest thing I've ever worked on."
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