• by Colin Kirkland , April 7, 2025

Soon after President Donald Trump announced another extension of the deadline to sell off TikTok to an American buyer, or fully ban the video-sharing app in the region, he cited the recent U.S. tariffs imposed on China as the primary reason a deal was not reached by April 5.

“We had a deal pretty much for TikTok — not a deal but pretty close — and then China changed the deal because of tariffs,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One over the weekend. “If I gave a little cut in tariffs they would have approved that deal in 15 minutes, which shows the power of tariffs.”

Trump officially implemented widespread tariffs on Wednesday of last week, days before a deal to sell TikTok was reportedly close to being made.

On Friday, ByteDance issued a statement addressing the unresolved matter, saying that the company “has been in discussion with the U.S. Government regarding a potential solution for TikTok U.S.”

“An agreement has not been executed,” the company explained. “There are key matters to be resolved. Any agreement will be subject to approval under Chinese law.”

The legally dubious extension issued by Trump's Executive Order gives ByteDance an additional 75 days to reach a deal that would sell TikTok's U.S. business to a buyer in the region in order to avoid a ban of the app for over 170 million American users.

For weeks, both Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance assured the American people that the White House would reach a TikTok sell-off deal by April 5.

Two weeks ago, 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.

However, Trump’s recent order increases the 20% tariff he had previously imposed on China by an additional 34%. In response, China said on Friday that it would be imposing its own 34% tariff on all imports from the U.S. beginning April 10.

“We hope to continue working in Good Faith with China, who I understand are not very happy about our Reciprocal Tariffs,” Trump recently posted on Truth Social.

In the final days before this most recent extension was issued, more bidders joined the pool of potential buyers, including AppLovin, Amazon, a startup led by OnlyFans founder Tim Stokely, Walmart, alongside Oracle Corp., Blackstone Inc. and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

Right now, it seems China is not open to the deal the White House had reportedly arranged, which involves TikTok’s U.S. operations becoming its own separate entity owned by a group of U.S. shareholders, with ByteDance retaining a 19.9% stake in the new business (the highest ownership percentage allowed by the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.”

In addition, the U.S. would “lease” TikTok’s powerful algorithm from ByteDance, instead of taking it over entirely.