WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump on Friday extended by 75 days a deadline for Chinese technology company ByteDance to sell US assets of popular short video app TikTok to a non-Chinese buyer or face a ban that was supposed to have taken effect in January under a 2024 law.

After unveiling new global tariffs, Trump said on Thursday he would consider a deal for TikTok in which China approves the sale in exchange for relief from the new levies _ now at 54 per cent for Chinese goods imported into the United States.

Here’s what you need to know about the future of TikTok.

Who is bidding for TikTok?

Zoop, a startup created by OnlyFans founder Tim Stokely, partnered with a crypto currency foundation, Hbar Foundation, to bid for the app.

Amazon, Perplexity AI, marketing platform AppLovin, US billionaire Frank McCourt and influencer Jimmy Donaldson, better known as the YouTube star Mr Beast, have also entered bids.

Private equity firm Blackstone is discussing joining ByteDance’s non-Chinese shareholders, led by Susquehanna International Group and General Atlantic, in bidding for the business.

Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz is in talks to buy out TikTok’s Chinese investors, as part of a bid led by tech company Oracle.

Trump has said he would like the US government to have a 50pc stake in any joint venture.

Will selling TikTok improve US security?

The US government has long claimed TikTok is a national security concern, but has released little evidence of specific breaches. Cybersecurity experts are divided over effects of the ban.

“There was never a plausible threat model that showed the data collected by TikTok about its users could be used to undermine US national security,” said Milton L. Mueller, a cyber security expert from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

“A change in ownership makes little security difference ... the security impact will be non-existent,” Mueller said.

He said that unless US users were disconnected from global users in the way that Chinese apps are siloed from the global internet, content and data could be provided from ByteDance if requested by the Chinese government.

However Matt Pearl, a director at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank, said selling TikTok would prevent the Chinese government from spying on Americans or engaging in influence operations by manipulating the algorithm.

Trump could also target other Chinese companies, such as AI company DeepSeek, in a push for data sovereignty under the law.

Babette Ngene, a director of digital civil liberties non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation, said banning TikTok was unconstitutional and disastrous for free speech.

Published in Dawn, April 5th, 2025