President Donald Trump has asked Vice President J.D. Vance to broker a possible sale of TikTok to a U.S.-based buyer before the latest ban extension runs out in April, NBC News reported, citing two people familiar with the arrangement. National Security Adviser Michael Waltz will work alongside Vance on the congressionally mandated deal with ByteDance, the app’s Chinese-based owner.
Their task is not simple. What ByteDance and China will accept, if anything, is unknown. Trump recently floated the idea of 50/50 American and Chinese joint ownership, but the situation remains fluid, and it is uncertain whether that split would answer the national security worries that led to the ban. Meanwhile, Trump has added a 10% tariff on Chinese goods on top of those already in place, which may make ByteDance less eager to talk.
How it got here
TikTok was set to be banned on Jan. 19 under a bipartisan law signed by then-President Joe Biden. The company, which has always said it does not share U.S. users’ data with the Chinese government, challenged the measure, and the Supreme Court upheld it in the final days of the Biden administration.
On Jan. 18 the app went dark in the U.S., returning roughly 12 hours later after Trump signaled he would review the ban and not penalize the app or the stores carrying it. The next day, TikTok sent users a push notification crediting him. On his first day in office Trump signed an executive order telling the Attorney General not to enforce the law for 75 days, to avoid “an abrupt shutdown of a communications platform used by millions of Americans.”
Many users had downloaded a similar Chinese app, RedNote, in protest, which raised further security and censorship concerns.
Buyers and lawmakers
Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, an Illinois Democrat and ranking member of the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, told NBC that ByteDance may now be more open to selling because it has run out of options. “There’s only so much they can try to do to change the law, it all failed,” he said. He added that prospective American buyers, from YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson, known as MrBeast, to billionaire Frank McCourt, have been “lining up.”
Rep. Jason Crow, a Colorado Democrat who backed the divestment law, said TikTok should stay available to Americans but be separated from ByteDance. “I’m a father. I’ve heard from my kids, my teenage kids, about this a lot,” he said, while noting his focus on national security. The law was built that way, he said, “because we don’t want to end the platform.”
During the 75-day reprieve, people who kept TikTok on their phones can still use it and upload content. Google and Apple are not offering it in their app stores, though a Trump administration official said the Justice Department and the executive order make clear the companies will face no penalties for doing so.
