TikTok, the popular short video app owned by China’s ByteDance, thanked US President Donald Trump, while stating it was still working with Vice-President J.D. Vance who was tasked with brokering a deal under a sell-or-ban law.
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While TikTok’s fate remains in limbo after Trump offered another 90-day postponement on the deadline for a deal, it will not be business as usual and a US sale could result in a bifurcated platform given the deal’s complexity due to China’s export rules, according to analysts.
TikTok said on Thursday that it was “grateful” for Trump’s deadline extension, now set at September 17, which would allow it to keep serving its 170 million American users. It also said that it “continues to work with Vice-President Vance’s Office”, which has been tasked with overseeing the deal process.
There has been no update from Vance since March, when he said his team was “trying to close this thing by early April”. However, negotiations collapsed amid escalating US-China trade tensions. On April 5, Trump extended the deadline to June 19. He first delayed it on January 20 when he took office.
Despite the negotiations for a trade truce, TikTok has not been named in the discussions. Beijing has remained silent on the matter, other than China’s foreign affairs ministry issuing repeated statements saying that the TikTok case would be handled “according to China’s laws and regulations”.
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According to China’s latest export control list, two of the technologies used by TikTok would require Beijing’s approval for sale or export. The restriction was implemented by Beijing in 2020, which caused the collapse of a deal that had been discussed between ByteDance, Oracle and Walmart during the first Trump administration.