President Donald Trump said on Friday he would grant the TikTok deal an additional 75-day extension to “ensure all necessary approvals are signed” while preventing the popular social media app from going dark in the United States.
“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 deadline for the Chinese-owned app to strike a deal with a U.S. company is Saturday, April 5.
Under a bipartisan bill passed last year and signed by former president Joe Biden, ByteDance must sell TikTok to a U.S.-based company, or the app will be banned from U.S. servers such as the App Store and Google.
The bill intends to protect Americans and national security by preventing a company with ties to the Chinese government from accessing American users’ data.
Various tech and investment companies have been in talks to purchase TikTok from ByteDance, including Amazon, Oracle, Perplexity AI, Blackstone and others.
The president said he hopes to work “in good faith” with China to strike a deal, just as he imposed lofty tariffs.
“We hope 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.!),” Trump wrote.
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Source: independent.co.uk