Trump gives TikTok more time to divest U.S. operations
President Donald Trump is once again delaying enforcement of a Congressional ban on TikTok in the U.S.
In an executive order, Trump said TikTok now has until Wed. Sep. 17, 2025, to find a new owner for its U.S. business. This follows an initial extension of an April 5, 2025 deadline imposed by Congress to Thursday, June 19, 2025.
The continuing saga of whether TikTok will continue to operate in the U.S. dates back to the Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which was signed by President Biden in April 2024 in response to longstanding concerns over possible ties between TikTok’s China-based parent company ByteDance and the Chinese Communist Party and possible risks to U.S. user privacy (ByteDance and TikTok have publicly denied the validity of these concerns).
Due to this legislation, which makes it unlawful for U.S. companies to distribute, maintain, or update TikTok unless U. S. operation of the Chinese-owned platform is severed from Chinese control, TikTok briefly went dark in the U.S. during the weekend of Jan. 18-19, and Trump previously stated in a post on his social network Truth Social he does not want TikTok to "go dark."
Suitors for U.S. TikTok business emerge
Media reports indicate there is no lack of interested purchasers for TikTok’s U.S. enterprise, although no figures have been officially mentioned. In February 2025, an executive order from the White House mandated the federal government to establish a sovereign wealth fund, which uses government assets to invest in global markets, companies, real estate and private equity and could be used for the U.S. government to partially or fully finance a TikTok acquisition.
And according to Reuters, Amazon has placed a bid to purchase the U.S. business TikTok from ByteDance. Although Amazon, TikTok and ByteDance have all declined public comment so far, Reuters said a Trump administration official confirmed that Amazon sent a letter to Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick requesting to make an offer to purchase TikTok’s U.S. operation.
[READ MORE: How purchasing TikTok would benefit Amazon]
Other interested bidders are said to include Oracle, which has been storing TikTok’s U.S. data on its servers since 2022, as well as an investor group led by the founder of adult entertainment platform OnlyFans, a group of non-Chinese ByteDance shareholders, and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
See the full executive order from the White House here.
