President Donald Trump pushed back TikTok’s sell-or-be-banned deadline by 75 days on Friday.
That marks the second time the White House has given TikTok a last-second reprieve to find an American buyer for its U.S. assets. Had an extension not come when it did, the app would have become illegal nationwide at 12 a.m. Saturday.
TikTok will now have until June 18 to find a buyer, as U.S. corporations like Walmart, Amazon, and Oracle show interest in making what will surely be a multi-billion dollar purchase.
“My Administration has been working very hard on a Deal to SAVE TIKTOK, and we have made tremendous progress,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “The Deal requires more work to ensure all necessary approvals are signed.”
Trump’s initial TikTok extension came during his first week back in office and was also for 75 days.
Congress passed legislation with bipartisan support last April to have TikTok banned stateside if it did not find a new owner for its U.S. assets, as lawmakers said the data it scraped from users made it a national security threat due to its ties to China.
Trump campaigned on saving TikTok and said in January he would do everything he could to keep the app “alive” in America—despite him publicly acknowledging it was a potential threat to U.S. interests during his first term.
While both parties in Congress have united against TikTok—in its current state, at least—the app remains hugely popular across the country, and a ban going into place may have hurt the White House politically at a time it appears particularly vulnerable.
Vice President JD Vance, who was made the point man on securing TikTok’s future in America, was adamant this week there would be a sale by the April 5 deadline.
Such a deal never came to fruition, however, and the White House has been forced to direct much of its attention to propping up the president’s “Liberation Day” tariffs that went into effect Wednesday and have since cratered the U.S. stock market.
“We hope to continue working in Good Faith with China, who I understand are not very happy about our Reciprocal Tariffs,” Trump said in his post about TikTok, adding, “We do not want TikTok to go dark.”
