President Donald Trump said on Friday he would extend the deadline for TikTok to find a U.S. buyer by an additional 75 days 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.”
On his first day in office, Trump delayed the app’s ban via an executive order, giving the Chinese-based owner ByteDance until Saturday, April 5 to find a U.S. buyer.
The president held a White House meeting this week to discuss potential offers with advisers and Vice President JD Vance. The administration was reportedly nearing a TikTok deal but China halted the breaks on it after the president implemented more tariffs on China.
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.
A person familiar with negotiations told the Associated Press that the deal with ByteDance collapsed on Thursday after the tariff announcement.
ByteDance representatives reportedly told the White House that China would no longer approve the deal until further negotiations about tariffs and trade. It’s unclear if a deal can still be reached.
The president said he hopes to work “in good faith” with China to strike a deal.
“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.
Fulfilling a deal has proven to be difficult; ByteDance has yet to publicly agree to divest from TikTok. The social media app tried to fight the bill last year but the Supreme Court upheld the legislation.
The bill allows for the president to issue one 75-day extension.
Trump tried to ban TikTok during his first presidential term but reversed his position while campaigning in 2024, saying he would “save” the app from going dark.
Congress gave TikTok a deadline of January 19 to work out a deal but without one on the horizon the app went dark for a few hours. Once Trump took office, he signed an executive order directing Attorney General Pam Bondi not to take action against U.S. servers hosting TikTok for 75 days.
