Trump says he’s giving TikTok another 75 days to find a US buyer | World News

President Donald Trump on Friday said he is signing an executive order to keep TikTok running in the US for another 75 days to give his adminration more time to broker a deal to bring the social media platform under American ownership.Congress had mandated that the platform be divested from China Jan. 19 or barred in the US on national security grounds, but Trump moved unilaterally to extend the deadline to this weekend, as he sought to negotiate an agreement to keep it running.
Trump has recently entertained an array of offers from US businesses seeking to buy a share of the popular social media site, but China’s teDance, which owns TikTok and its closely-held algorithm, has insed the platform is not for sale.
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“My Adminration has been working very hard on a Deal to SAVE TIKTOK, and we have made tremendous progress,” Trump posted on his social media platform. “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.” Trump added: “We look forward to working with TikTok and China to close the Deal.”
TikTok, which has headquarters in Singapore and Los Angeles, has said it prioritizes user safety, and China’s Foreign Minry has said China’s government has never and will not ask companies to “collect or provide data, information or intelligence” held in foreign countries.
Trump’s delay of the ban marks the second time that he has temporarily blocked the 2024 law that banned the popular social video app after the deadline passed for teDance to divest. That law that was passed with bipartisan support in Congress and upheld unanimously the Supreme Court, which said the ban was necessary for national security.
If the extension keeps control of TikTok’s algorithm under teDance’s authority, those national security concerns pers. Chris Pierson, CEO of the cybersecurity and privacy protection platform BlackCloak, said that if the algorithm is still controlled teDance, then it is still “controlled a company that is in a foreign, adversarial nation state that actually could use that data for other means.”Story continues below this ad

“The main reason for all this is the control of data and the control of the algorithm,” said Pierson, who served on the Department of Homeland Security’s Privacy Committee and Cybersecurity Subcommittee for more than a decade. “If neither of those two things change, then it has not changed the underlying purpose, and it has not changed the underlying risks that are presented.”
The Republican president’s executive orders have spurred more than 130 lawsuits in the little more than two months he has been in office, but his order delaying a ban on TikTok has barely generated a peep. None of those suits challenges his temporary block of the law banning TikTok.
The law allows for one 90-day reprieve, but only if there’s a deal on the table and a formal notification to Congress. Trump’s actions so far violate the law, said Alan Rozenshtein, an associate law professor at the University of Minnesota.
Rozenshtein pushed back on Trump’s claim that delaying the ban is an “extension.” “He’s not extending anything. This continues to simply be a unilateral non enforcement declaration,” he said. “All he’s doing is saying that he will not enforce the law for 75 more days. The law is still in effect.Story continues below this ad
The companies are still violating it providing services to Tiktok.“The national security risks posed TikTok pers under this extension, he said. The extension comes at a time when Americans are even more closely divided on what to do about TikTok than they were two years ago.
A recent Pew Research Center survey found that about one-third of Americans said they supported a TikTok ban, down from 50% in March 2023. Roughly one-third said they would oppose a ban, and a similar percentage said they weren’t sure.
Among those who said they supported banning the social media platform, about 8 in 10 cited concerns over users’ data security being at risk as a major factor in their decision, according to the report.
Daniel Ryave, in Washington, DC, runs the TikTok account @SATPrepTutor with about 175,000 followers. It offers testing advice and helps Ryave find tutoring students. He has Instagram and YouTube accounts, but TikTok is better for reaching people, he said.“Story continues below this ad
Almost all of my new students come through TikTok,” he said. “A big chunk of my revenue is from one-on-one tutoring, and that’s a great way to source clients.”
When he heard about the extension, he was “relieved,” he said.“This extension will allow students to continue accessing high quality short form educational content that they aren’t seeking out elsewhere,” he said.