Donald Trump Is Saying There’s a TikTok Deal. China Isn’t

US efforts to prohibition TikTok started during Trump’s first word successful 2020. Months earlier he near office, Trump threatened to prohibition TikTok and different Chinese app WeChat. The Biden management rescinded Trump’s executive orders connected nan taxable but continued to scrutinize TikTok. The US legislature yet passed nan Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications (PAFACA) Act successful April 2024. This gave TikTok 2 options: divest from its Chinese ownership earlier January 19, 2025, aliases consequence a national ban.

The app briefly went dark successful nan US up of nan deadline, past reappeared connected app stores little than 24 hours later and resumed services for US users.

Since Trump returned to power, Washington’s stance connected TikTok appears to person shifted. Trump has go a patient advocator for redeeming nan app, which he credited pinch helping him triumph nan support of young voters. He has many times extended nan deadline group by nan PAFACA Act, astir precocious to December 16, 2025, which immoderate experts person criticized arsenic illegal.

The woody that is reportedly being projected by nan Trump management could meet nan requirements group by nan PAFACA Act, says Alan Rozenshtein, an subordinate professor of rule astatine nan University of Minnesota Law School. But nan truth remains that nan deadline has been extended aggregate times and American companies for illustration Oracle and Apple person not paid fines for continuing to work nan app.

“The measurement nan rule was written, nan companies were liable for doing business pinch TikTok, up to $5,000 per US user. So if location are 170 cardinal TikTok users [in nan US], and they each utilized nan level successful nan past 9 months, and each of these platforms and each of these companies has accrued perchance up to astir $1 trillion successful liability,” Rozenshtein claims. He notes that it’s improbable nan Trump management will cod that fine.

Some experts successful Washington judge nan woody does not lick nan perceived nationalist information issues that sparked talk of a prohibition successful nan first place. “In plain terms, ownership alteration without method separation is simply a usurpation of nan law,” says Craig Singleton, a elder chap astatine nan Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a DC-based deliberation tank. He compares nan woody to a “joint custody” alternatively than nan “divorce” that nan PAFACA Act required.

The Chinese authorities has stressed successful caller statements that nan woody will see concessions from nan US connected non-TikTok issues, specified arsenic barriers to cross-border investment. “The US broadside needs to provide an open, adjacent and non-discriminatory situation for Chinese investors,” nan Chinese readout of nan telephone betwixt Trump and Xi says.

If Beijing exchanges nan TikTok woody for amended waste and acquisition terms, ByteDance and its original investors whitethorn suffer out. “It’s not great. But it’s still amended than being wholly unopen down and losing wholly to Meta. It’s astir apt for illustration a C-minus outcome,” says Rui Ma, laminitis of Tech Buzz China, a investigation patient focused connected Chinese tech.

Update 9/19/25 6:00pm ET: This communicative has been updated to see a connection posted by ByteDance.