• by Colin Kirkland , April 4, 2025

Despite his promise to make a deal before April 5, President Trump has further extended the deadline to sell off TikTok to an American buyer, or fully ban the video-sharing app in the region.

For weeks, both Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance have been assuring the American people that the White House would reach a TikTok sell-off deal by this Saturday. Last week, Trump told reporters that there are “a lot of potential buyers” who have “tremendous interest in TikTok.” The President also stated that he would consider giving China “a little reduction in tariffs or something” to finalize a deal by the proposed deadline. 

In the past few days, major potential buyers have approached the White House with bids to buy the ByteDance-owned company, which hosts 170 million active American users -- including AppLovin, Amazon, a startup led by OnlyFans founder Tim Stokely, and most recently, Walmart -- however, Trump’s administration did not make a deal. 

The April 5 deadline will now be pushed forward 75 days, according to a TruthSocial post made by Trump on Friday.

“My Administration has been working very hard on a Deal to SAVE TIKTOK, and we have made tremendous progress,” he wrote. “The Deal requires more work to ensure all necessary approvals are signed, which is why I am signing an Executive Order to keep TikTok up and running for an additional 75 days.”

Trump’s continued delays to the law passed by Congress earlier this year are legally dubious. They have been passed by executive orders, not official acts, such as the proposed Extend the TikTok Deadline Act -- a bill that lawmakers urged Trump to support last month that would push the deadline until October 16. 

Senators have called Trump’s deadline extensions unlawful, arguing that “the path to saving TikTok should run through Capitol Hill.”

It is unclear whether lawmakers who sponsored the bill will sue over Trump’s multiple extensions. 

Shortly after Trump announced his decision to further delay the sell-off of TikTok, ABC News reported that Walmart is actively considering joining a group of investors to make a bid to buy the social platform. 

The multinational retailer attempted to team up with Microsoft to buy TikTok in 2020, providing Walmart with unfettered access to hundreds of millions of consumers, and the potential to grow their e-commerce business.

Walmart’s renewed interest in TikTok is likely a response to the recent offer by Amazon, a direct competitor.