March 7, 2025
Is President Trump going to give TikTok more time?
Now – let me just quickly break this down for you.
TikTok is supposed to disappear from the United States on April 5th. That’s according to Trump’s own executive order he signed just hours after he was sworn into office. That order gave TikTok 75 days to make a deal to avoid being banned and avoid the astronomical financial penalties for American companies that do business with TikTok. 75 days from January 20th is April 5th. Trump’s order says if there was no deal by April 5th then TikTok is gone and any American company that continues to do business with TikTok would get slapped with fines that would literally cripple even massive companies like Apple and Google.
Well – as I have been reporting the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act that went into effect on January 19th says in order for TikTok to avoid all of that — its parent company Bytedance needs to divest – or sell – TikTok in what is called a “qualified divestiture.” The whole point of the law is to remove China from the equation. But here’s where things get interesting. The law also says the only person who can determine whether Bytedance has successfully executed a “qualified divestiture” is the President of the United States. So yes – it’s up to Trump to make this deal and he’s the only one who gets to say whether TikTok has done enough to satisfy his concerns about China’s alleged influence and the alleged national security concerns that congress has. – I say alleged because congress and the US government have never produced any concrete evidence to back up any of their claims. They have never been able to prove publicly in court that any of it is happening. It’s all been very hypothetical. That’s neither here nor there…
I want to go back to this idea that the law says really this deal is now up to Trump. A few weeks ago President Trump put JD Vance the vice president and Mike Waltz the national security advisor in charge of working this deal out with TikTok. For the record – when JD Vance was a Senator he voted no on the legislative package that included the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act and mike Waltz when he was a House Representative voted yes on the same law.
Now – these two haven’t said publicly what has been happening with these negotiations or how it’s going to shake out in the end but it seems the president is willing to give them the time they need to find a path forward. We now president trump has gone back and forth on TikTok over the years – but it seems – at least for right now – he wants to keep TikTok in the US. But I want to caution you – the president has been known to change his mind – we’ve seen that in vivid color this week. So it is possible he could change his mind on this too if he doesn’t think things are going in a good direction.
Watch President Trump talk about extending TikTok deadline here.
