TikTok will live on for at least another three months in the United States, as President Donald Trump is poised to extend a sale or ban deadline for the third time since taking office this year.

“President Trump will sign an additional Executive Order this week to keep TikTok up and running,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Tuesday.

The popular video sharing app was supposed to be banned in the US after its Chinese owner, ByteDance, refused to sell it to a US buyer by a January deadline.

TikTok and ByteDance did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the BBC.

Leavitt said the 90-day extension would “ensure this deal is closed so that the American people can continue to use TikTok with the assurance that their data is safe and secure.”

Before Leavitt’s announcement, Trump told the BBC that he would “probably” extend the TikTok.

“We’ll probably have to get China approval,” Trump said. “I think we’ll get it. I think President Xi will ultimately approve it.”

When asked if he has the legal basis to extend the deadline, he responded: “We do.”

Trump’s extension is at odds with the will of Congress, which passed the sale-or-ban measure last year. His predecessor, former President Joe Biden, immediately signed the bill into law.

The law was aimed to address concerns that TikTok, which has 170 million American users, could be used by China as a tool for spying and political manipulation.

The Supreme Court agreed with a lower court and upheld the law in January just before Trump was set to take office.

The platform briefly went dark for a few hours during the weekend before Trump’s inauguration.

TikTok praised Trump for saving the platform after it became available again.

Trump tried to force a sale of TikTok to an American buyer in 2020, during his first term in office.

But last year, Trump said he liked the platform because he believed it had helped him win the 2024 presidential election.

“I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok, because I won youth by 34 points,” Trump said in December, although most young voters backed the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.

Trump’s unilateral deadline extensions have led some analysts to dismiss the notion that a ban might ever take place during his time in office.

“What ban? There is nothing ‘looming’ about the potential TikTok ban anymore,” said Forrester principal analyst Kelsey Chickering.

“TikTok’s behaviour also indicates they’re confident in their future, as they rolled out new AI video tools at Cannes this week.”

“Smaller players, like Snap, will try to steal share during this “uncertain time,” but they will not succeed because this next round for TikTok isn’t uncertain at all,” Ms Chickering added.

The Trump administration said in April that the US and China had neared a deal that would have placed majority control of TikTok’s US operations under American ownership. That deal has yet to materialise.

“There are key matters to be resolved,” a ByteDance spokesperson said at the time. “Any agreement will be subject to approval under Chinese law.”

Trump has said he would be open to seeing it sold to cloud computing giant Oracle, whose co-founder Larry Ellison is a long-time ally of Trump’s.

Billionaire Frank McCourt, Canadian businessman Kevin O’Leary, and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian are part of another team bidding for the platform.

And the biggest YouTuber in the world Jimmy Donaldson - AKA MrBeast - has said he’s also interested in buying TikTok as part of a different investor group.

Source: BBC
--Agencies