Back on January 19th, TikTok—the app where many U.S. citizens were spending hours (and hours and hours) a day, went dark. The ban was a result of TikTok being China-owned, and therefore a "foreign adversary-controlled application." Basically, U.S. lawmakers were (and remain) concerned that ByteDance could leak U.S. user data to the Chinese government.
But the app was back up within 12 hours, and on January 20th, Trump issued an executive order “instructing the Attorney General not to take any action to enforce the Act for a period of 75 days,” and allowed the app to be downloaded in the google play and app stores without repercussions (the downloading of the app on new devices had been previously banned). Then, on April 4th, Trump signed another executive order delaying the ban an additional 75 days.
But the app is still owned by Chinese company ByteDance, so in theory, if it’s not sold by the time the 75-day extension is up, it could be banned in the US. But speaking on Air Force One on Thursday, Trump said the US could offer a deal whereby China approves a TikTok sale in exchange for relief from US tariffs on Chinese imports.
He also claimed that Trump said "multiple investors" were closing in on a deal. The companies that are allegedly in the running include tech giant Amazon, the co-founder of Reddit Alexis Ohanian, Jimmy Donaldson AKA MrBeast, Tim Stokely, the founder of OnlyFans, Microsoft, and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison.
If a sale isn’t reached by June, the US doesn’t receive relief from tariffs in China, and Trump doesn’t stress that Apple and Google won’t face consequences for facilitating app downloads, TikTok could once again be banned, obliterating one of the defining features of American life from over the past few years.
