The News
US President Donald Trump said Friday he would grant TikTok another 75-day extension to comply with a law that requires the app to either be sold or face a ban in the US. The app was facing a Saturday deadline.
Trump said that a deal for TikTok’s US operations to be sold “requires more work to ensure all necessary approvals are signed,” adding that he did not want TikTok to “go dark.” Trump said he hoped to continue negotiations with China, who he acknowledged was “not very happy” with his 34% reciprocal tariffs.
NBC News reported Friday that Trump was weighing a deal that would see China retaining control of TikTok’s prized algorithm, which would be leased to a US company with a minority ownership stake. The Financial Times had previously reported that the White House was close to endorsing a deal for a consortium of US investors, including Andreessen Horowitz and Blackstone, to buy the app’s American operations.
SIGNALS
Trump uses tariffs as negotiating tool for TikTok sale
Trump said that his 34% tariff against China will give him “great” negotiating power with Beijing to land a deal on TikTok’s sale, and suggested that he was open to reducing the duties. But Beijing “likely won’t see a moderate concession on tariffs as a win,” Bloomberg columnist Catherine Thorbecke argued, and Chinese officials view TikTok’s potential sale as a “precedent-setting saga” that could expose other Chinese companies to US “plunder.” Trump’s willingness to save TikTok, even through tariff negotiations, “is only yielding more power to America’s geopolitical nemesis,” Thorbecke wrote.
Trump is eager to secure TikTok deal
The TikTok deadline “comes at a make or break moment for the White House,” Politico wrote, after Republicans suffered a major electoral setback in Wisconsin ahead of 2026 mid-term elections. Trump will be eager to please “the online MAGA supporters who helped deliver him to the White House,” The Washington Post noted: Public support for a TikTok ban stands at 34% among US adults, down from 50% in March 2023, according to Pew. At the same time, “Trump’s personal involvement in the negotiations” raises the prospect that TikTok “might be sold to a MAGA-friendly owner,” MSNBC wrote: Trump could turn his billionaire friend, Larry Ellison, into “the next media mogul,” The New York Times wrote, with Ellison’s company, Oracle, leading a list of potential bidders for TikTok.
TikTok’s algorithm remains key sticking point
Any successful deal to buy TikTok “comes down to the algorithm,” a Hudson Institute analyst told the Washington Post. The algorithm is both “the secret sauce that makes TikTok so addictive” and “the source of national security concerns,” ABC News wrote. Should Byte Dance retain ownership of the algorithm — as outlined under one of the proposals the White House is considering — it would betray “everything Congress set out to do” with its sell-or-ban law, Platformer argued. Security concerns over China’s ability to access Americans’ data through the algorithm and potentially misuse it would also create a legal headache for TikTok’s prospective buyers, who have demanded liability protection to move forward with the sale, sources told ABC News.