WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump formally extended the deadline to keep the social media app TikTok available in the United States until Dec. 16, giving time to complete the framework of the deal announced Monday after talks between American and Chinese government officials.
The executive order signed on Tuesday by Trump was the fourth time he has bypassed federal law to prolong the deadline for the China-associated TikTok to sell its assets to an American company or face a ban. The original deadline set by Congress was Jan. 19 of this year, a day before Trump took the oath of office for his second term.
Trump was asked Tuesday about the framework deal he announced a day earlier and repeated that he would discuss TikTok with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday. He has said there are companies that want to buy the social media app owned by ByteDance and that details about its potential suitors would be announced soon.
“I hate to see value like that thrown out the window,” Trump said as he departed the White House, with his wife, first lady Melania Trump, for a state visit to the United Kingdom.
The framework came out of a meeting in Madrid that concluded Monday between U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, among other officials.
Bessent told reporters that the goal was to switch TikTok’s assets to U.S. ownership for its operations in America, though he declined to discuss the details of the framework.
Li Chenggang, China’s international trade representative, told reporters the sides have reached “basic framework consensus” to cooperatively resolve TikTok-related issues, reduce investment barriers and promote related economic and trade cooperation.
The U.S. president warmed to TikTok and the prospect of keeping it alive under the belief that it helped him to win younger voters in the 2024 presidential election. Still, the law mandating its sale in the U.S. was premised on the possible security risks the app poses in its collection of data.
The prolonged negotiations between the U.S. and China over TikTok might ultimately mean little as its novelty has “slowly faded,” said Syracuse University political science professor Dimitar Gueorguiev in a statement.
“The U.S.–China deal on TikTok may look like a breakthrough, but it risks being a Pyrrhic victory,” Gueorguiev said. “Its famous algorithm, once seen as uniquely powerful, has lost much of its mystique—copycat efforts show that the secret was not the code itself but TikTok’s early-mover advantage and network effects. Any U.S. buyer is therefore purchasing market share and user base, not transformative technology.”
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