Could TikTok actually go offline in the US in September if China-based owner ByteDance doesn’t sell the company’s US operations to American investors? And haven’t we been in this position before?
Donald Trump has been keen to position himself as the saviour of TikTok ever since his return to The White House at the start of the year. But now his Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has said that “TikTok is going to go dark” if a change in ownership in the US is blocked by either ByteDance itself or the Chinese government. And decisions that will decide the app’s fate in the US should be “coming soon”.
US Congress passed a law last year that said TikTok would be banned in the country if ByteDance failed to sell its US operations, based on concerns that the Chinese government has access to US user-data via the China-based parent company. The change of ownership was meant to have occurred by January this year, but Trump has repeatedly pushed back the deadline for a sale, with 17 Sep the latest cut-off date.
For American artists, creators and labels who rely on TikTok as a key promotional and fan engagement platform, the uncertainty about the app’s future in the US has been a cause for concern. Although with Trump having now postponed the ban three times, and given the President has his own audience on the platform, it’s easy to wonder if the ban ordered by Congress will ever actually go into force.
Officially Trump has pushed back the ban because his team, led by Vice President JD Vance, have been facilitating a deal that will see ByteDance sell TikTok US to a group of “very wealthy” Americans. Trump recently indicated that a deal of that kind is very nearly done.
However any transaction will need approval of the Chinese government, and the future of TikTok has become a component in the wider ongoing trade war between the US and China – another reason for assuming that talks to do a deal could just go on forever with the ban being quietly pushed back every few months.
That assumption might also be why one of the investors involved in the deal-making, Blackstone, recently walked away from the talks.
Perhaps aware that all this reduces the incentive for ByteDance and China to actually sign off on a deal, Lutnick is keen to stress that Trump’s government, like Congress, is adamant a ByteDance-owned TikTok cannot continue to operate in the US and the need for a change in ownership is now getting urgent.
He told CNBC, “We’ve made the decision. You can’t have Chinese control and have something on 100 million American phones”. ByteDance, and therefore China, “can keep a little piece”, he added, but “Americans will have control”. As a result of the deal being facilitated by Team Trump, he explained, “Americans will own the technology and Americans will control the algorithm”. Go America!
He then stated, “If that deal gets approved by the Chinese, then that deal will happen”. But “if they don’t approve it, then TikTok is going to go dark, and those decisions are coming very soon”.
Which suggests the third deadline for TikTok being sold may be an actual real deadline. Though there are still eight weeks to go until 17 Sep and – in Trump terms – that’s an eon, and almost anything could happen between now and then.
