Washington — President Trump has once again delayed the enforcement of a bipartisan law that would effectively ban TikTok in the U.S. A deal to separate TikTok from its China-based parent company, ByteDance, has remained elusive.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday the president would sign the latest executive order this week delaying enforcement of the law for 90 days, marking the third delay in the law’s implementation since his inauguration in January.
“As he has said many times, President Trump does not want TikTok to go dark. This extension will last 90 days, which the Administration will spend working to ensure this deal is closed so that the American people can continue to use TikTok with the assurance that their data is safe and secure,” Leavitt said in a statement.
The orders have directed the Justice Department to not take action or impose penalties against companies like Apple and Google for failure to remove the widely popular video-sharing app from their platforms.
The current extension expires Thursday.
When Mr. Trump announced the last extension in early April, his administration had reached an agreement that would have spun TikTok’s operations in the U.S. into a new company that was owned and operated by a majority of American investors, a source familiar with the plans said at the time. But after Mr. Trump announced sweeping tariffs, ByteDance told the White House that China would no longer approve the deal until issues over trade and tariffs were resolved, the source said.
However, ByteDance said after the April announcement that a deal had not been reached because there were still key issues to be resolved, and noted that any deal would be subject to the Chinese government’s approval.
Mr. Trump acknowledged as much in May, telling reporters that “we’ll probably have to get China’s approval.”
“China’s never easy,” he said. “I’d like to save TikTok. I mean, TikTok was very good to me.”
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump expressed confidence that China would sign off on an eventual deal, saying that “I think President Xi will ultimately approve it.”
The president also reiterated his support for TikTok on June 12, touting his popularity on the app that he unsuccessfully tried to ban during his first term.
“I was No. 1 on TikTok in its history. Can you believe that?” Mr. Trump claimed. “So I guess I like TikTok.”
Mr. Trump spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping earlier this month in a 90-minute conversation that the U.S. leader said “was focused almost entirely on trade.” Neither countries’ summaries of the call mentioned TikTok. Days later, senior U.S. and Chinese trade representatives met in London and reached a “framework deal” to ease the trade war.
Testifying to the Senate Finance Committee on June 12 after the trade talks, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said TikTok “was not discussed at the meetings in London.”
“I have no visibility into TikTok,” he told the committee.
Citing national security concerns, Congress passed the law last year with bipartisan support that gave ByteDance until Jan. 19 to fully sever ties with TikTok or be cut off from U.S. app stores and web-hosting services. The law was upheld by the Supreme Court days before it took effect.
TikTok briefly and voluntarily shut down before the January deadline, but reinstated access to U.S. users after Mr. Trump, who took office one day after the deadline, vowed to take action. Still, Apple and Google waited nearly a month to restore TikTok to their U.S. app stores after Mr. Trump issued the first executive order.
But there’s been little action from Congress in response to the Trump administration ignoring the law, despite lawmakers sounding the alarm for years that TikTok could serve as a vessel for China to spy on Americans, collect vast amounts of their data or serve them propaganda.
“The courts have been really clear on this,” Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, told reporters in early June. “I think we ought to enforce the law.”
Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa said Tuesday he wasn’t sure whether the president had the legal authority to not enforce the law, but noted there haven’t been any repercussions.
“I just want finality,” Grassley said. “I’d like to have the president say how much more talk are we going to put up with? I want some certainty and just [to] know that Congress isn’t being played when we make a decision [for it] to be sold.”
,
Cristina Corujo,
and
Jennifer Jacobs
contributed to this report.
