President Donald Trump will, once again, give TikTok a temporary reprieve as it faces another deadline to sell itself or face a ban in the United States. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed Tuesday that Trump will sign another executive order to extend the deadline.
The latest extension — this time for 90 days — is now the third time Trump has punted on a looming TikTok ban since he took office in January. “As he has said many times, President Trump does not want TikTok to go dark,” Leavitt said in a statement reported by CNN. “This extension will last 90 days, which the Administration will spend working to ensure this deal is closed so that the American people can continue to use TikTok with the assurance that their data is safe and secure.”
US officials are presumably still negotiating terms of a potential deal that would allow TikTok to remain operational in the United States, though there’s been little news on that front since the last extension in April. A number of potential buyers are interested in acquiring TikTok’s US business, but officials in China would need to sign off on any agreement. In April, several reports suggested that a deal would likely involve the company’s existing US investors rolling over their stakes into a new entity. Those talks were derailed by Trump’s tariffs on Chinese imports.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/donald-trump-will-delay-a-looming-tiktok-ban-for-a-third-time-231757522.html?src=rss
