President Donald J. Trump is now threatening to ban TikTok in the United States after preparing a list of potential buyers and proposed deals for China and ByteDance. However, the foreign parties have yet to approve one.
To date, there are still no done deals regarding the purchase and operates of TikTok in the US as China has yet to choose the next owners of the platform.
Trump Threatens to Ban TikTok in the US
According to U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick (via CNBC), President Trump is willing to let TikTok face a ban that will cease its operations in the US should there be no progress on its sale. For the past months, President Trump has brokered the deal between China, ByteDance, and the interested American buyers of the platform.
Should China and ByteDance fail to sell the app to the proposed buyers President Trump arranged for them, Secretary Lutnick claims that TikTok would stop operating in the US as the Foreign Adversary law proposes.
It is known that the US is also asking for TikTok's algorithm and to have control over it should the company be sold, with this being a 50% American ownership and the rest would be divided between China and ByteDance.
That being said, ArsTechnica reported that ByteDance may be unwilling to share its algorithm with the US.
China, ByteDance Won't Approve Deals
At this point, China and ByteDance have yet to give their answer on who is their chosen US buyer to take over TikTok and assume its operations.
It was revealed that Trump had already presented them with a handful of buyers, but it remains unconfirmed if they are being reviewed or if there are already some names being considered.
Donald Trump and the TikTok Ban
Back in January, the deadline for TikTok's sale elapsed and its parent company, ByteDance, was unable to arrange a deal that would sell it to a US-based company or organization. TikTok went offline for several hours, but President Donald Trump's earliest order of business was to extend the deadline of its sale.
President Trump's efforts are not entirely a free pass for ByteDance and China as TikTok still faces the ban, and its deadline to be sold to an American company had merely been extended. The third extension of the platform's sale came last June, with Trump and TikTok hoping that it would be the last as they reportedly claimed that they were close to finding a buyer.
However, China still has the last say as the East Asian country and ByteDance would still have to approve the sale. President Trump previously teased that in two weeks, he would reveal who his chosen group of very wealthy people was to buy TikTok, but that did not happen as China has yet to green-light it.
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