President Trump may follow through with his recent assertion that he would ban TikTok if the Chinese-owned company was not sold to an American entity.
The threat first circulated in early August, when Trump said TikTok would have until September 15th to be sold to an American corporation. Shortly after this time, the President issued two Executive Orders, both of which urged ByteDance (TikTok’s parent company) to sell off US assets.
However, both orders allow more generous timelines for TikTok to be sold, with the first giving until September 20th and the second allowing up to November 12th— more than a week after the election.
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The two foremost opportunities for TikTok to remain in operation involve two bids, one being a joint bid by Microsoft and Walmart, and the primary competing bid being an offer from computer software company, Oracle, and a small number of ByteDance shareholders.
Still, the President has expressed limited interest in extending the deadline for the sake of granting more time for acquisition negotiations. He told reporters Thursday, “We’ll see what happens. It’ll either be closed up or they’ll sell it. So we’ll either close up TikTok in this country for security reasons, or it’ll be sold.”
He continued, “I’m not extending deadlines, no. It’s September 15th. There’ll be no extension of the TikTok deadline.” This statement shoots down any hopes for a grace period TikTok may have had after China revised its technology export laws, just two weeks after Trump issued his second Executive Order.
The President’s reasoning for using Tuesday as the deadline is not specified, but it remains the most consistently emphasized deadline to date.
