The Trump administration has granted yet another deadline extension to TikTok. ByteDance, the popular video-sharing app’s Chinese owner, now has until December 4th to complete a sale of TikTok’s US operations.
President Donald Trump had first signed an executive order back in August, requiring ByteDance to divest the app to an American company within 90 days. That deadline expired on November 12 but the Chinese company was given a 15-day extension to complete a deal.
However, even that extended period is also expiring this Friday. Seemingly, ByteDance still failed to reach an arrangement on time that would resolve US national security concerns. Now, Bloomberg reports that the deadline has been extended by seven more days.
Apparently, ByteDance only recently submitted a revised proposal to the Committee on Foreign Investment (CFIUS). A Treasury spokesperson told the publication that this one-week extension has been given to allow time to review this submission.
The US gives ByteDance until December 4 to complete the TikTok sale
The American government has repeatedly expressed national security concerns over TikTok. Outgoing President Donald Trump’s administration claims that the app could be used for Chinese espionage. Although the administration was initially pushing for a nationwide ban on the app, that no longer seems to be an option.
The United States Department of Commerce tried to curb transactions on TikTok, effectively enforcing a ban. However, a federal court blocked that restriction. Separately, the court also blocked the Commerce Department’s restriction on new downloads of TikTok from the Play Store and Apple’s App Store.
TikTok already has more than 100 million installs in the US. That’s a huge user base and influencers on the platform have understandably raised voices against the proposed ban.
Recent reports suggest that the US no longer plans to enforce the shutting down of TikTok in the country. Instead, they want ByteDance to divest the app’s US operations to an American company.
ByteDance did submit a proposal back in September. The company said it would create “a new entity, wholly owned by Oracle, Walmart and existing US investors in ByteDance, that would be responsible for handling TikTok’s US user data and content moderation.”
The Trump administration never formally approved of this arrangement though. ByteDance, meanwhile, has reportedly submitted multiple revisions of this proposal since, all aimed at addressing the US government’s concerns. However, everything’s still on the table awaiting signatures on the dotted line. Whether the most recent submission does enough to resolve US national security concerns now remains to be seen.