Trump Says TikTookay Deal ‘Coming Soon’

With 25 days to go to arrange a U.S. sell off deal under the current extension agreement, TikTok is seemingly getting closer to securing a U.S.-based partner to keep it in operation in the region.

Or not. Hard to say at this stage.

Over the weekend, U.S. President Donald Trump was asked about the state of the TikTok sell-off deal.

As reported by Reuters:

“U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday that his administration was in touch with four different groups about the sale of Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok, and that all options were good. “

Trump also said that an announcement should be coming soon.

Which would be the hope, given that there are now fewer than four weeks remaining in the 75-day extension that he granted for the company to arrange a deal. But then again, that 75-day extension does also seem fairly arbitrary at this stage.

To clarify, as of right now, it’s against U.S. law for TikTok to be operating in the U.S. That’s because under the previous administration, the TikTok sell off bill (officially titled the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act”) was approved by the senate, and signed off by the then president, and even upheld after a Supreme Court challenge.

The bill officially went into law on January 19th, and it stipulates that any company that enables access to TikTok in the U.S. moving forward is liable for penalties of up to $500 per active U.S. user.

Which, at 170 million American users, is a lot of fines.

When Trump was sworn in, however, a day after the bill went into effect, he issued an executive order to extend the deadline for a deal, which also, in his view at least, delays the implementation of the TikTok ban.

Which is not legal, and would not hold up to a challenge, but Trump has also assured providers that the U.S. government won’t be looking to seek penalties against them for supporting the app’s operations in the nation.

But again, technically, TikTok is still banned, and it’s only Trump’s assurances that are enabling it to continue operating as his team works on an alternative.

As such, the 75-day extension that Trump granted is already not official, while Trump has also said that he’ll extend that again if he has to in order to facilitate a deal.

So essentially, the “deadline” in this case is only a theoretical constraint, as none of this is actually by the book, or legally defensible upon scrutiny.

Which also means that we don’t know what will come of TikTok at this stage. For further context, TikTok representatives recently claimed that they’ve had very little communication with the Trump Administration on the sell-off push, and there’s been ongoing confusion as to who’s in charge of the supposed negotiations.

So it sounds like it’s pretty messy, which could either be a problem that ends up seeing TikTok banned next month. Or it could mean nothing at all, and Trump will just extend the deadline again sometime soon.

So, will TikTok ultimately remain available in the U.S.? I’d say it will, though if a ban was enacted on April 5th, that would also be unsurprising at this stage.