Despite President Donald Trump's insistence that the White House will save TikTok for 170
million American users before the September 17 deadline, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said last week that the app will disappear in the region if China does not approve a deal.
“If that
deal gets approved by the Chinese, then that deal will happen,” Lutnick told CNBC. “If they don't approve it, then TikTok is going to go dark. And those decisions are coming very
soon, so let's see what the Chinese do. They've got to approve it. The deal is over to them right now.”
“We've made the decision,” Lutnick added. “You can't have
Chinese control and have something on 100 million American phones.”
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Technically, the federal government decided to ban or sell off TikTok in January, when the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled
Applications Act with regard to China's potential access to Americans' user data.
Since then, Trump has issued three legally dubious executive orders extending the selloff of the short-form
video sharing app.
In that time, the president has issued public claims that his administration was close to finalizing deals with a handful of companies, including a promise from Vice
President J.D. Vance that the White House would reach a selloff deal at the start of
April, which did not materialize due to steep tariffs Trump imposed on China at the time.
The next deadline enforced by Trump's executive order is less than two months away, and while
there has been talk about a new group of buyers interested in buying TikTok,
a key player in the potential deal has reportedly backed out and the president's announcements remain vague.
According to Lutnick, if a deal is not reached by the September deadline, TikTok
could go dark like it briefly did in January after the act was signed by then-president Joe Biden.