December 15, 2025
Is TikTok being banned tomorrow or not.
The short answer is – yes it will — *unless* one of two things happens. One— unless TikTok is actually sold. Like literally it switches ownership by tomorrow. Or two — unless President Trump signs another executive order to extend the deadline to ban TikTok again.
Well – we’re pretty sure the company is not going to be sold and ownership switched by tomorrow – more on that in a second — so the only option left to keep TikTok alive in the United States after tomorrow is for president trump to sign another executive order to extend the ban for the fifth time. But he hasn’t done that yet.
I want to talk about that option first – because that’s most likely what’s going to happen. According to this executive order Trump signed back on September 16th – he pushed back the TikTok ban deadline to December 16th in accordance with the protecting Americans from foreign adversary controlled applications act. Back in September both trump and the treasury secretary said they had reached a deal with China to sell TikTok but they needed more time to complete the complicated process of offloading one of the biggest social media platforms in the world from Chinese control – to at least the u-s version being transferred into American control. Back in September Trump said another three month delay in the TikTok ban would help his administration complete that process. But China never confirmed that they had agreed to any sale — all they’ve ever said is that they will continue to work with the United States to properly address issues related to TikTok. Well – here we are – three months later – tomorrow is the December 16th deadline and – that sale process is not done. In fact – some of the investors trump announced would be involved in buying the u-s version of TikTok have said recently tat they have no idea what’s going on with the sale, but they’re ready to go when trump gives the green light.
So what’s the hold up? Well –it’s really two things. One– I as I reported more than a year ago when congress was debating the protecting Americans from foreign adversary controlled applications act –the sale deadline lawmakers included in the legislation was always unrealistic. The sale of any huge global company takes a long time – but then in the case of TikTok you have to add in the complications of strict antitrust laws, and a big media company and foreign politics with China of all countries. This deal was always going to take a lot of time. The other issue is China itself. Because of the way things work in that communist country – business like Bytedance, TikTok’s parent company can’t just sell. The deals have to go through the Chinese government and not only does China *not* want to give up control of this huge global business called TikTok they also don’t want to give up control of the critical TikTok algorithm which was developed by a Chinese company. But the protecting Americans from foreign adversary controlled applications act demands both those things be turned over to the Americans. And there in lies the problem.
But regardless of what China wants — the law in the United States says what it says and the supreme court ruled that the law that banned TikTok is constitutional. TikTok was supposed to be banned almost a year ago – and here we are still using it and TikTok’s ownership remains exactly the same. There are some real national security and legal issues starting to creep up here and all of the kicking the can down the road we’re seeing from the trump administration is becoming problematic. The law allows the president to give TikTok only one 90 day extension of the ban and here we are about to see potentially – the fifth. Even lawmakers who support TikTok and want to keep it alive in the United States are like — hey this continued extension of the ban seems a little suspect.
I tell you all this so you keep in the back of your mind that even if trump extends the deadline to ban TikTok for the fifth time – there are still going to be serious legal questions about whether he has the power to keep doing this without producing an actual sale of TikTok and transfer of control.
More from Sen. Markey here.
