Social Media. TikTok Sale Drags On, Donald Trump Extends Deadline by 90 Days

The sale of TikTok, imposed by the US Congress , has been slow to materialize, to the point that Donald Trump will, once again, postpone the deadline, set for Thursday, due to the lack of a green light from China. After having already postponed the deadline twice by 75 days, the American president will issue a new executive order to postpone it for 90 days, this time, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt announced Tuesday. The American president "does not want to see TikTok disappear," she declared.

The social network remains banned in the United States under a law passed by Congress in 2024, unless its parent company, ByteDance, relinquishes control. According to several American media outlets, a protocol was reached in early April. It provided for the separation of TikTok US from the ByteDance group, with a restructuring of the capital. The shares held by non-Chinese investors increased from 60% to 80%, with ByteDance retaining its current 20%.

The IT group Oracle, which already hosts TikTok US's data on its American servers, was expected to be in charge, accompanied by asset manager Blackstone and entrepreneur Michael Dell. But the announcement of tariffs imposed by Donald Trump on his trading partners, with a particularly hefty tariff for China, at 54% (later raised to 145%), blocked the transaction on the Chinese side. "We'll probably need China's approval" by mid-September, the new deadline, Donald Trump acknowledged on Tuesday. "I think President Xi will eventually give the green light."

Although the two countries agreed in early June on a "general framework" to normalize their trade relations, the TikTok issue remains unresolved. But far from suffering from this geopolitical crisis, the network still boasts 170 million users in the United States, including 7.5 million business accounts, ranging from large corporations to SMEs.

The leniency displayed by the billionaire, who reiterated to NBC that he had "a soft spot for TikTok," has significantly diluted the urgency of the situation. On the platform, only a few messages dispassionately mention the date of June 19, their authors convinced that a new deadline is coming. This contrasts sharply with the beginning of the year, which saw many influencers preparing their migration to other climes, particularly Instagram and YouTube.

In early May, on NBC, Donald Trump still claimed he could integrate the TikTok aspect into broader trade negotiations with China, as a kind of bonus, but the two issues now seem quite separate. Other candidates for a takeover of the platform had positioned themselves earlier this year, in particular "Project Liberty" of entrepreneur and Olympique de Marseille majority shareholder Frank McCourt and the generative artificial intelligence (AI) startup Perplexity AI, each wanting to integrate the application into a broader model.

The mystery surrounding TikTok's famous recommendation algorithm, whose sophistication largely explains the platform's success, remains. For now, ByteDance has never agreed to the principle of divesting this technological gem, as requested by Congress, which is concerned about China's use of data or an attempt to influence American opinion. But as Thursday's deadline approaches, elected members of Congress, who were very angry a few months ago, now seem to have lost interest in the issue.