Trump Grants TikTok 90-Day Reprieve, Delays Divest-or-Ban Deadline to 17 September

President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order pushing back – for a third time – the date by which China-based ByteDance must sell TikTok’s U.S. operations or see the video-sharing platform barred from the country.

“I’ve just signed the Executive Order extending the deadline for the TikTok closing for 90 days (to September 17, 2025),” the president wrote on his Truth Social account.

Had the order not been issued, the statutory deadline set by last year’s Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary-Controlled Applications Act would have taken effect on 19 June, forcing TikTok either to finalize a sale or shut down in the United States.

In a statement, TikTok said it was “grateful for President Trump’s leadership” and pledged to keep working with the office of Vice-President J.D. Vance, which has been brokering negotiations. The platform counts more than 170 million U.S. users and 7.5 million American businesses, according to company figures.

Enacted in April 2024, the divest-or-ban law survived a Supreme Court challenge in January. Several Democratic senators have argued that the White House has no statutory power to postpone its enforcement and warned that any prospective deal must still satisfy the law’s strict national-security requirements.

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters this week the administration would “spend the next three months making sure the sale closes so Americans can keep using TikTok with the assurance that their data is safe and secure.”

Negotiators had edged toward an agreement this spring that would place TikTok’s U.S. business inside a new, majority-American-owned entity. Talks stalled, however, after Beijing signaled it would withhold regulatory approval unless Washington rolled back Trump-era tariffs on Chinese goods. In March the president said he was open to tariff relief as part of a broader divestiture deal

TikTok’s popularity has risen sharply in recent years. A December Pew Research Center poll found that one-third of U.S. adults and nearly two-thirds of teenagers use the app; among Americans under 30, the share climbs to 59 percent.

With input from Al Jazeera