President Trump Likely to Keep TikTok Online Despite Looming Deadline
By Movieguide® Contributor
President Donald Trump announced he will probably allow TikTok to continue to operate in the U.S. even if a deal is not reached before April 5th, the current deadline for the platform to reach a divestment agreement.
“We have a lot of interest in TikTok. China is going to play a role, so hopefully China will approve of the deal,” President Trump said, per The Hill. “But they’re going to play a role. But we have a lot of interest in TikTok.”
A bill requiring TikTok to be divested by current parent company ByteDance was signed into law by then-President Biden on April 24, 2024. The bill gave ByteDance 270 days to sell the TikTok before the platform would be banned from operating within the U.S. Though ByteDance lobbied for the bill to be reversed and its dispute made its way into the Supreme Court, the legality of the bill was upheld and TikTok was banned on January 19, 2025.
Despite the legality of the ban, the blocking of TikTok proved to be extremely controversial as millions of creators and small businesses lost their ability to be discovered on the app. However, many in the intelligence community were adamant that TikTok posed a great risk to the U.S. by both collecting data that could be accessed by the Chinese government, while also providing a means for China to influence U.S. citizens at large.
READ MORE: DO AMERICANS SUPPORT THE TIKTOK BAN?
Only one day after TikTok’s ban, Trump was sworn in as the president and later that day he signed an executive order allowing TikTok to continue to operate in the U.S. The extension, however, was only a temporary fix and still required ByteDance to divest the platform in order for TikTok to continue to operate in America long-term.
Since then, many have put forth a bid to buy the platform including Elon Musk, SHARK TANK investor Kevin O’Leary and YouTuber Jimmy Donaldon, better known as Mr. Beast. None of these deals, however, have gone through and only a month away from the new deadline, ByteDance has yet to begin a divestment effort.
While ByteDance has repeatedly stated it will never sell the platform, President Trump believes a deal will eventually be reached allowing the platform to be sold to a U.S.-based investor. For this reason, he announced he will keep the app online, further extending the time it can operate before it changes hands.
Movieguide® previously reported:
Americans can download TikTok from the Apple App store and Google Play following a tumultuous few weeks.
Shortly before President Donald Trump took office, TikTok went dark in the United States for a few hours on Sunday, Jan. 19.
But by that afternoon, Trump cut a deal with the platform, restoring use that day. Soon after he was sworn in on Monday, Jan. 20, he signed an executive order that didn’t overturn the ban but rather told “the US attorney general not to enforce the law for now,” according to the BBC.
“The unfortunate timing of section 2(a) of the Act — one day before I took office as the 47th President of the United States — interferes with my ability to assess the national security and foreign policy implications of the Act’s prohibitions before they take effect,” Trump’s executive order reads. “This timing also interferes with my ability to negotiate a resolution to avoid an abrupt shutdown of the TikTok platform while addressing national security concerns.”
He explained that the Attorney General will not take “any action” to enforce the ban for a 75 day period to “allow my Administration an opportunity to determine the appropriate course forward in an orderly way that protects national security while avoiding an abrupt shutdown of a communications platform used by millions of Americans.”
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