On April 4, President Trump extended his deadline for TikTok to find a non-Chinese buyer by another 75 days, but whether such a sale would even happen is unclear. For the past few months, TikTok’s future in the United States has been undecided. Under President Biden, TikTok was slated to be banned in mid-January, and after an unsuccessful appeal to the Supreme Court, its fate seemed all but certain. On Jan. 19, TikTok was banned for a whopping 12 hours, after which President-elect Trump announced that he would extend TikTok’s deadline once he took office. This first extension was set to run out on April 5, but Trump, appearing determined to keep TikTok online, has extended it again. 

Keeping TikTok available in the United States long-term hinges on some crucial details: to whom ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, would sell the social media platform, and whether Chinese regulators would allow a sale in the first place. Though talks about a possible sale of TikTok have been ongoing, Trump’s recent tariff hikes on China put a wedge in negotiations; he has indicated that he might be willing to lower tariffs on China if they are willing to part with the app. 

Another hurdle would be having the funds to actually purchase the app. Among the flurry of Trump’s executive orders during his first month in office was the creation of an American sovereign wealth fund, which he suggested could be used to buy TikTok. Sovereign wealth funds are common, and are essentially state-owned investment companies, but how the Trump administration plans to find theirs is still unclear.

Among the top private investors trying to buy TikTok are some of Trump’s “broligarchs,” such as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Oracle’s Larry Ellison. Both companies have connections to the app, with TikTok partnering with Amazon to enable in-app shopping, and Oracle running the cloud infrastructure for TikTok’s United States operations. Earlier this year, Amazon’s own attempt at a short-form social media platform, Amazon Inspire, shut down after a few years of very limited success. For them, TikTok presents a strong opportunity to use an already popular platform to increase sales of their products. Another player to note is a group of investors headed up by OnlyFans founder Tim Stokley under the umbrella of his new social media startup Zoop. He is partnering with a crypto foundation to raise the needed capital for the deal.

TikTok’s new deadline runs out in mid-June, but based on Trump’s past unwillingness to  “Let TikTok go dark,”  it is unclear whether this second extension will necessarily have to be the final one. Hypothetically, Trump could continue to extend the sale deadline as much as he wished. Until TikTok finds a new, non-Chinese owner, concerns about data theft and surveillance will remain. But with the escalating trade war with China, any negotiations are likely to be very precarious.

Article by Oscar Guillemin