In a surprise move, US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order extending the deadline for China-based ByteDance to divest its US assets of the short-form video app TikTok by another 90 days. The new deadline is set for September 17, 2025. Trump announced the extension on his social media platform, Truth Social, stating, “I’ve just signed the Executive Order extending the Deadline for the TikTok closing for 90 days.”
The decision comes despite a law passed in April 2024, known as the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which required TikTok to stop operating in the US by January 19 unless ByteDance had completed divesting itself of the app’s US assets or demonstrated significant progress towards a sale. The law was challenged in the Supreme Court, but the nation’s highest court upheld the ban.
TikTok has welcomed the extension, saying in a statement, “We are grateful for President Trump’s leadership and support in ensuring that TikTok continues to be available for more than 170 million American users and 7.5 million US businesses that rely on the platform.” The company has been working with Vice President JD Vance’s office to negotiate a deal.
However, Democratic senators have pushed back on the deadline extension, arguing that Trump does not have the legal authority to order it. “President Trump does not want TikTok to go dark,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Tuesday. She added that the administration will spend the next three months making sure the sale closes so Americans can keep using TikTok with the assurance that their data is safe and secure.
This is the third time Trump has extended the deadline, having previously extended it to early April and then again last month to June 19. In March, Trump said he would be willing to reduce tariffs on China to get a deal done with ByteDance to sell the app. A deal had been in the works this spring that would spin off TikTok’s US operations into a new US-based firm majority-owned and operated by US investors, but it was put on hold after China said it would not approve the deal due to the tariffs imposed by the Trump administration.
TikTok has a wide US user base, especially among younger audiences. According to a survey from Pew Research conducted in December, a third of all US adults use TikTok, and among the under 30 demographic, it is higher at 59 percent, while 67 percent of teens use the platform. The extension of the deadline has been met with relief from TikTok users and the company’s supporters, but the controversy surrounding the app’s ownership and data security concerns are likely to continue.