(NBC News)-President Donald Trump on Friday said he would extend by 75 days the deadline for TikTok’s owner to find a non-Chinese buyer, averting what could have been another disruption of the app.
The decision came as something of a surprise, with Trump and top administration figures, including Vice President JD Vance, sounding confident that a substantive resolution would be reached this week.
But that was before Trump’s sweeping tariffs — on China and other countries — went into effect.
ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, must find a non-Chinese buyer for the app or else it will be banned under a law passed in 2024. Trump had previously delayed the app’s ban via executive order on his first day in office, effectively giving ByteDance until April 5 — Saturday — to comply with the law.
“My Administration has been working very hard on a Deal to SAVE TIKTOK, and we have made tremendous progress,” he wrote in a Truth Social post. “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.”
ByteDance has previously said it did not plan to sell TikTok. It has largely remained silent about whether it is in talks with bidders and has not publicly confirmed it would divest at all.
On Friday, a spokesperson for ByteDance said the company “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.”
A deal had been agreed to as of Wednesday, but the recently imposed tariffs on China presented a late breaking hurdle, two people familiar with the talks, who were granted anonymity to share details of private discussions, told NBC News. ByteDance representatives informed the White House on Thursday, after the tariffs were implemented, that China would not accept a deal until there could be negotiations around trade and tariffs, one of these people said.
Trump was prepared to sign an executive order approving the deal, which would have spun off TikTok’s U.S. operations into a new, American-based company owned and operated by a majority of American investors, with ByteDance maintaining a minority stake, this person added. The executive order would have called for a 120-day closing period to finalize paperwork and financing.
White House officials were uncertain as late as Friday morning whether a deal could be announced, one of the sources said.
In his Truth Social post, Trump referenced the tariffs, saying said the administration hopes “to continue working in Good Faith with China, who I understand are not very happy about our Reciprocal Tariffs (Necessary for Fair and Balanced Trade between China and the U.S.A.!). This proves that Tariffs are the most powerful Economic tool, and very important to our National Security!”
“We do not want TikTok to ‘go dark,’” Trump added.
A source familiar with the TikTok negotiations said Trump believes China backing out of the deal will ultimately mean the two countries will negotiate on TikTok and tariffs, because the framework for the deal is already done and tariffs now need to be negotiated alongside them. The person said that’s how the U.S. believes the TikTok deal will ultimately be closed: negotiating on tariffs and finding a “middle ground” where both the U.S. and China ultimately lower their tariffs on each other.
TikTok’s future in the United States has been in limbo ever since former President Joe Biden signed the bipartisan legislation last year, with lawmakers citing national security concerns over the possibility of China accessing American users’ data.
The app has about 170 million U.S. users.
TikTok attempted to challenge the ban, but the Supreme Court upheld it in the final days of the Biden administration. By that point, however, both Biden and Trump had begun to distance themselves from the ban, with the former saying he would leave it up to the Trump administration to enforce.
The app briefly went dark in the U.S. just before Trump’s inauguration, but restored service after the president signaled that he would work with ByteDance to find a solution.
Vice President Vance, who along with national security adviser Michael Waltz is overseeing the TikTok matter, had expressed confidence that the framework of a deal would be in place by Saturday’s deadline.
Vance and his team spent nearly two months leading the talks, negotiating directly with a litany of potential investors and ByteDance officials, one of the sources familiar with the process said. U.S. officials had been led to believe China would approve the proposal that resulted, one of these people said.
On Wednesday, Trump met at the White House with Vance, Waltz and others to weigh the deal. And in an interview Thursday morning with Fox News’ “Fox & Friends,” Vance indicated that he believed a more substantive announcement was imminent.
“I think that we’re in a good place,” Vance told the show’s co-host, Lawrence Jones. “We’re going to keep on working at it, but I’ll let the president make that announcement.”
Jones then asked Vance what would happen if “it doesn’t come out before the deadline.”
“It’ll come out before the deadline,” Vance replied. “We need a couple days to continue working on it, to finalize things. And of course, we’re gonna let the president announce whatever we ultimately decide.”
The tariffs emerged as a last-minute complication later in the day, after Vance’s “Fox & Friends” interview, two people familiar with the talks said. China’s reversal underscores the strength of the security concessions that the U.S. had achieved in its negotiations, one of the sources added.
Numerous prospective bidders have expressed interest in acquiring the popular social media platform from ByteDance.
Interested buyers include the likes of Wyoming entrepreneur Reid Rasner; Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, who joined billionaire investor Frank McCourt’s bid; artificial intelligence search engine startup Perplexity AI; and former Trump administration Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. On Wednesday, e-commerce giant Amazon and mobile technology company AppLovin became the latest companies to throw their hats in the ring.
