Donald Trump has drawn a line in the sand on international trade, but there’s one foreign export he seems pretty keen to keep in the country. Per NBC News, the president just granted TikTok another 75-day extension on Congress’ sell-or-ban law. That means the app officially won’t go dark this Saturday, not that many of its users seemed to know that was a possibility in the first place. Unlike last time, frequent scrollers will tell you that it’s been business as usual on the app, without any of the dramatic deathbed confessions influencers made the first time around.
Of course, when the big bad January ban ended up lasting only about 12 hours, it was hard to get quite so worked up about the second. Besides, for all Trump’s seeming desire to break services used by millions in this country, he has followed through on his promises to try to keep this particular one around. (Not for nothing, he was also the one who initially tried to ban it in 2020, a point he’s neglected to mention across his litany of recent Truth Social posts.)
“My Administration has been working very hard on a Deal to SAVE TIKTOK, and we have made tremendous progress,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post today. “The Deal requires more work to ensure all necessary approvals are signed, which is why I am signing an Executive Order to keep TikTok up and running for an additional 75 days.” As of this writing, It’s unclear if the president is referring to the hypothetical Amazon deal reported earlier this week, or if he has a different buyer in mind entirely. He also spouted some nonsense about China not being happy with his recent tariff plan, which somehow “proves that Tariffs are the most powerful Economic tool, and very important to our National Security.” While it’s also not immediately clear how Trump can celebrate antagonizing China while simultaneously “hop[ing] to continue working in Good Faith” with it to close the deal, what we do know for sure is that TikTok will live to dance another 75 days.
