President Donald Trump has said that a deal to sell TikTok will be made by April 5. As there are still questions about whether the app will be banned in the United States.
In January, the US passed a law banning TikTok unless its parent company, ByteDance, sold it, causing the app to stop working for US users.
However, TikTok came back less than a day later after Trump’s election win .He signed an order delaying the sale or ban for 75 days.
Since then, tech companies, celebrities, and investors have shown interest in buying the app.
Did Trump stop the US TikTok ban?
An executive order is a directive from the president that has the power of law.
Trump signed an executive order on January 21, right after he became president, about sale or ban.
However, the president’s order does not stop the ban.
Instead, it tells the US attorney general not to enforce the law for now, a step that experts thought he would take first.
This gives his administration more time to decide what to do next.
It also allows the president to challenge a Supreme Court ruling from January 17 that supported the law to ban this app.
The Supreme Court’s decision stated that the ban aimed to stop China, which is considered a foreign threat. Therefore from using its control over ByteDance to collect personal data from TikTok users in the US.
If ByteDance doesn’t find a buyer by April 5, as set by Trump’s extended deadline for the sale or ban.
If no deal happens, they might ban the app again and remove it from app stores.
However, Trump could let the law stay but tell the Department of Justice (DoJ) to ignore it, meaning Apple. Google wouldn’t face punishment for allowing TikTok downloads.They would still keep the law, but they wouldn’t enforce it.
In February, Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App Store allowed TikTok back after authorities told them they wouldn’t be punished for keeping the app.
Trump has also said he might extend the deadline if needed.
Who might buy?
ByteDance has always said that TikTok is not for sale, but it’s unclear if that has changed under Trump’s presidency.
On March 30, Trump told reporters that there were “a lot of potential buyers” and “great interest” in buying TikTok.
Earlier in March, he mentioned that his administration was talking to four different groups about buying the app.
Trump seems to want to find a solution that follows the general idea of the law, not the exact details.
He also suggested the idea of TikTok being owned by both the US and ByteDance, aiming for a 50-50 partnership.
Several people, including Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and Elon Musk, have been mentioned as possible buyers.
Other people who have been linked to buying TikTok include billionaire Frank McCourt and Canadian businessman Kevin O’Leary, a celebrity investor on Shark Tank, the US version of Dragon’s Den.
Co-founded Reddit Alexis Ohanian, said in a March post on X that he had joined McCourt’s bid.
In response of that, Elon Musk declares. He said that “The list of people who do not want to buy TikTok is much smaller than the list who do.”
The biggest YouTuber, Jimmy Donaldson (also known as MrBeast), has also said he’s in the running after several investors reached out to him following a tweet where he showed interest.
Trump said Companies like Microsoft are part of talks to buy TikTok.
A US search engine called Perplexity AI has also apparently suggested merging with TikTok.
What other platforms could TikTok users use instead?
This app says it has 170 million users in the US who spend an average of 51 minutes per day on the app in 2024.
“Marketing experts we’ve spoken to say they’ll shift their advertising budgets to Meta and Google if they can’t advertise on TikTok,” said Kelsey Chickering, an analyst at Forrester.
Other platforms that could benefit include Twitch, which is known for livestreams—a feature that is also popular on this app. While Twitch is mainly known to gamers, it is expanding into other types of content.
Other Chinese-owned apps, like Xiaohongshu (known as RedNote in the US), have also grown quickly in the US and UK.
