TikTok has won another reprieve. The Chinese social network won't be disappearing from the United States anytime soon: since the beginning of the year, Donald Trump has been granting it reprieves, and the next one shouldn't be long in coming. The White House announced that a new presidential executive order will be signed this week, pushing back the deadline once again, this time by 90 days. This will be the third postponement, and everything suggests there will be more as a solution to this hot potato is found.
A law that came into effect on January 19 requires Bytedance, TikTok's parent company, to sell its American operations, or face a ban on US territory. This is already an extremely complex process, but when you add to that Trump's trade war against China (and the rest of the world), the equation becomes impossible to solve. In fact, TikTok has become a stake in negotiations between the world's largest economies.
In April, an agreement was on the verge of being reached to transfer majority control of TikTok to American assets. But it fell through after Donald Trump announced a barrage of tariffs. "There are still key points to be resolved. Any agreement will be subject to approval under Chinese law," Bytedance explained at the time. The only problem is that so far, Beijing has not signaled its intention to accept anything.
Trump has assured us of this (but can we really trust him?): "I think [Chinese] President Xi will approve the agreement, yes," he said yesterday. China knows full well that a TikTok ban in the United States will be viewed very poorly: the app has more than 170 million American users.
Source: CNN
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