The White House has announced a 90-day extension for TikTok to continue operating in the United States, delaying enforcement of a law requiring its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to divest its stake in the popular social media platform. The move marks the second deadline extension by President Donald Trump, who has shifted his stance on the app amid a volatile geopolitical and electoral landscape.
“President Trump will sign an additional executive order this week to keep TikTok up and running,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Tuesday. “As he has said many times, President Trump does not want TikTok to go dark.” She added that the extension will give the administration time to finalize a deal that protects user data and satisfies national security concerns.
The announcement, first detailed in a Financial Times report, comes after months of negotiations between the U.S. government, ByteDance, and a group of American investors to create a spin-off entity that would manage TikTok’s U.S. operations. Under the terms of the proposed agreement, investors such as Andreessen Horowitz and Blackstone would control roughly half of the U.S. business, with additional stakes held by existing stakeholders like General Atlantic, Susquehanna, and KKR.
However, talks have repeatedly stalled due to escalating trade tensions between Washington and Beijing. According to sources cited by the Financial Times, ByteDance had initially indicated that Chinese regulators were prepared to approve the transaction. But following Trump’s April 2 announcement of new tariffs on Chinese goods, Beijing reportedly withdrew its support for the deal — prompting ByteDance to pause its engagement with U.S. investors.
The 90-day reprieve extends a process that began in earnest last year, when Congress passed legislation mandating ByteDance to divest TikTok or face a nationwide ban. Trump has now granted extensions from the original January deadline to April, then from April to June 19, and now to September, as political and diplomatic hurdles continue to delay closure of the agreement.
Trump’s posture on TikTok has evolved sharply since 2020, when he issued an executive order during his first term accusing the app of being a national security risk and enabling Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal data. Yet by 2024, Trump began embracing TikTok as a political tool, particularly to connect with younger voters. In May, he told NBC that he had developed “a little warm spot in my heart for TikTok.”
The White House reportedly also explored bringing in alternative investors, including controversial conservative media figure Tucker Carlson, to satisfy domestic political demands while addressing security concerns, according to Financial Times sources.
With no final agreement in place and geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and China still unresolved, the future of TikTok in the U.S. remains uncertain. The administration emphasized that the extension is not indefinite and that negotiations will continue “with urgency” to finalize a deal that ensures American user data remains protected from foreign access.
