Trump signs executive order to extend TikTok deadline
With a deadline to sell or be prohibited in the United States for a few hours, Tiktok obtained another last minute respite from President Trump on Friday.
“My administration worked very hard on an agreement to save Tiktok, and we made enormous progress,” wrote Trump on Truth Social. “The agreement requires more work to ensure that all the necessary approvals are signed, which is why I point out an executive decree to maintain operational Tiktok for 75 additional days.”
Trump also said that China was “not very happy” from the steep prices he announced this week, which, according to him, were necessary for a fair and balanced business between the two countries.
“This proves that prices are the most powerful and very important economic tool for our national security,” he wrote. “We don’t want Tiktok” going dark “. We look forward to working with Tiktok and China to conclude the agreement. »»
On Friday, China responded to the 34% tariffs imposed by the United States by announcing that it would impose a rate of 34% on imports of all American products from Thursday.
The extremely popular social media application has been on fragile field in the United States since 2020, when Trump decided to close it during his first mandate due to national security problems linked to his Chinese parent company, Bytedance.
Bytedance, he said, could help the Chinese government by sharing the data it collects from around 170 million American users, integrating malware into the application or helping to distribute disinformation.
Four years later, President Biden signed a law forcing to sell American Tiktok affairs or to face a national ban.
Tiktok responded by continuing the American government, saying that a ban would violate the rights of the 1st amendment and arguing that there was “no support for the idea” that his Chinese property posed national security risks.
In January, the United States Supreme Court unanimously confirmed the law, which would make application stores such as Apple and Google Play illegal to distribute Tiktok or issue updates to the application of social media.
A deadline was set for January 19, and the application became dark for a few hours before Trump’s intervention, signing an executive decree on January 20 for Tiktok to work for 75 days, until April 5.
An auction war has been behind the scenes for months, involving potential buyers in several industries, including Amazon, the former owner of the Dodgers Frank McCourt, Oracle, Microsoft and Youtuber Mrbeast.
Trump told journalists on Thursday on the Air Force One that his administration was “very close to an agreement with a very good group of people”.
