WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — President Donald Trump had a TikTok deal in place Wednesday for the app’s operations to be spun off into a new company based in the U.S. and owned and operated by a majority of American investors, with ByteDance maintaining a minority position, according to a person familiar with the negotiations.
But the deal collapsed Thursday after Trump announced wide-ranging reciprocal tariffs, including against China. ByteDance representatives called the White House to indicate that China would no longer approve the deal until there could be negotiations about trade and tariffs, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive details of the negotiations.
The person added that on Friday it was uncertain whether a tentative deal could be announced after the Chinese government’s reversal of its position complicated TikTok’s ability to send clear signals about the nature of the agreement that had been reached for fear of upsetting its negotiations with Chinese regulators. Trump instead announced he was signing an executive order to extend by an additional 75 days the congressionally mandated ban that was set to go into effect Saturday.
The near-deal was constructed over the course of months, with Vice President JD Vance’s team negotiating directly with several potential investors and officials from ByteDance.
The Trump administration had confidence that China would approve the proposed deal until the tariffs went into effect.
TikTok, which has headquarters in Singapore and Los Angeles, has said it prioritizes user safety, and China’s Foreign Ministry has said China’s government has never and will not ask companies to “collect or provide data, information or intelligence” held in foreign countries.
Trump’s delay of the ban marks the second time that he has temporarily blocked the 2024 law that banned the popular social video app after the deadline passed for ByteDance to divest. That law was passed with bipartisan support in Congress and upheld unanimously by the Supreme Court, which said the ban was necessary for national security.
If the extension keeps control of TikTok’s algorithm under ByteDance’s authority, those national security concerns persist.
Chris Pierson, CEO of the cybersecurity and privacy protection platform BlackCloak, said that if the algorithm is still controlled by ByteDance, then it is still “controlled by a company that is in a foreign, adversarial nation-state that actually could use that data for other means.”
“The main reason for all this is the control of data and the control of the algorithm,” said Pierson, who served on the Department of Homeland Security’s Privacy Committee and Cybersecurity Subcommittee for more than a decade. “If neither of those two things change, then it has not changed the underlying purpose, and it has not changed the underlying risks that are presented.”
The Republican president’s executive orders have spurred more than 130 lawsuits in the little more than two months he has been in office, but his order delaying a ban on TikTok has barely generated a peep. None of those suits challenges his temporary block of the law banning TikTok.
A recent Pew Research Center survey found that about one-third of Americans said they supported a TikTok ban, down from 50% in March 2023. Roughly one-third said they would oppose a ban, and a similar percentage said they weren’t sure.
Among those who said they supported banning the social media platform, about 8 in 10 cited concerns over users’ data security being at risk as a major factor in their decision, according to the report.
Terrell Wade, a comedian, actor and content creator with 1.5 million followers on TikTok under the handle @TheWadeEmpire, has been trying to grow his presence on other platforms since a ban was threatened in January.
“I just hope we get more clarity soon so creators like me and consumers can focus on other things rather than the ‘what ifs,‘” he said.
—By FATIMA HUSSEIN, AAMER MADHANI and SARAH PARVINI, Associated Press
AP Business Writer Mae Anderson in New York contributed to this story.