Trump Extends Deadline To Secure TikTok Deal Until December 16

President Donald Trump again extended the deadline for TikTok’s Chinese parent ByteDance Ltd. to divest the platform’s US operations — this time until Dec. 16 — staving off a nationwide shutdown of the app.

Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order to again provide more time to finalize the sale for the popular video-sharing app, following recent talks between US and Chinese negotiators that led to a framework agreement.

The president earlier Tuesday told reporters he had “a deal on TikTok” with the Chinese as he departed the White House for a state visit to the UK, but declined to name the companies involved. Trump is expected to speak on Friday with Chinese leader Xi Jinping about the plan.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in an interview with CNBC that the deal was similar to the commercial terms that had been negotiated earlier in the year and indicated that he believed Trump and Xi would finalize the deal this week.

“This deal wouldn’t be done without proper safeguards for US national security,” Bessent said. “It seems as though we were also able to meet the Chinese interest.”

CNBC reported Tuesday that Oracle Corp. would keep the TikTok cloud contract under the framework being discussed, which could close in 30 to 45 days. Multiple versions of a solution involving Oracle remaining a technical partner to TikTok have been floated over the years.

Oracle shares rose as much as 5.9% in New York on Tuesday. The company’s stock is up 85% so far this year thanks to its ascendant cloud infrastructure business.

Trump’s executive order is the fourth extension he’s issued since a national security law that requires ByteDance to sell off TikTok’s US business took effect in January. Since that time, Trump has instructed the Justice Department not to enforce the law, or penalize other companies supporting TikTok.

Trump granted yet another reprieve even though the 2024 national security law allows for only one 90-day extension of the deadline. That posture has defied bipartisan consensus behind the divest-or-ban provision — and has raised questions about whether the president’s repeated extensions have been legally sound. 

The terms of a new potential deal, and whether they would satisfy the requirements of the national security law, remain unclear but the will to challenge Trump legally or politically over his approach to TikTok has waned.

Tuesday’s extension means TikTok can continue operating in the US, and partners like Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google can continue hosting the popular video app in their online stores while the administration takes more time to strike a deal with ByteDance on a “qualified divestiture” to a non-Chinese owner. 

Though there have been several interested buyers for TikTok over the past year, Chinese officials in Beijing have the ultimate say over any such transaction, and had signaled opposition to a deal as recently as late August. In the past, the administration has also indicated they were close to a deal only to see it fail to materialize.

Before Bessent this week announced that the outline of an agreement had been reached, Trump told reporters “we may let it die” and that it was “up to China.”

The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act was aimed at addressing concerns that the popular app used by roughly half the country could also be employed by Beijing to manipulate public opinion and gather sensitive data on Americans. The measure received broad bipartisan support and was signed into law by then-President Joe Biden. 

But Trump, who believes the app helped him win young voters in the last election, has been reluctant to enforce a ban. More recently, Trump has dismissed privacy and national security concerns altogether, telling reporters in August that they are “highly overrated.” Days earlier, the White House started its own TikTok account.