Trump to grant TikTok another 90 day reprieve from legal ban in U.S.
June 18 (UPI) -- President Donald Trump extended a pause on legislation banning TikTok from operating in the United States a third time, extending it for a further 90 days to allow time for a deal to split the firm's U.S. business from its Chinese parent company.
The White House said Tuesday that Trump would sign a fresh executive order this week instructing the Justice Department not to take measures or impose fines on TikTok or tech providers such as Google and Apple for allowing the video-sharing app to remain on their platforms.
'As he has said many times, President Trump does not want TikTok to go dark. 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,' said Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
The previous 75-day extension from April, which was due to expire on Thursday, came after his administration agreed a deal, according to CBS News, to spin off TikTok's American operation into a majority U.S.-owned entity.
However, that deal was derailed by Trump's imposition of severe tariffs on China with parent ByteDance saying Beijing would not authorize the sale while the dispute over tariffs and trade was ongoing -- although TikTok maintained the deal was not finalized and approval from Beijing was a given.
Trump said Tuesday that he was confident that Beijing would give its blessing.
'I think President Xi [Jinping] will ultimately approve it.'
A convert to TikTok after trying to ban it in his first 2017- 2021 term, Trump acknowledges security concerns over the personal data of American users ending up in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party that prompted Democrats to join in passing a Republican bill requiring TikTok to sell by Jan. 19 this year, or be shutdown.
The latest extension takes that deadline to mid-September, almost 18 months after the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act was signed into law by then-President Joe Biden in April 2024.
Copyright 2025 UPI News Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
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