Donald Trump has said he’s open to extending the June 19 deadline for a TikTok ban in the US by 75 days, if the short video company is not sold to a US based by that time.
In an interaction with NBC’s “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker, Trump said, “I’d like to see it done, I have a little sweet spot in my heart because I won young people by 36 points… and I focused on TikTok,” Trump told NBC .
Notably, the Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act was passed with bipartisan support in 2023 and banned TikTok in the US on 19 January 2025 over concerns of national security and privacy. Soon after taking over, President Trump had given a 75-day reprieve to the app and again in April.
Trump was working on a deal to spin off TikTok’s US arm into a separate company owned and operated by US investors. However, that deal has been put on hold after China indicated it would not approve such a deal amid rising tensions over Trump’s so-called ‘reciprocal’ tariffs.
According to a Reuters report citing a source, ByteDance’s US investors are continuing to work on the TikTok deal, but the US and China would need to resolve their differences before the deal could go through.
Trump on China tarriffs:
In the same interview, Trump said he was willing to lower tariffs on Chinese goods, acknowledging that current rates are so high that they have effectively halted trade between the world’s two largest economies.
The Trump administration has imposed tariffs of up to 145 per cent on Chinese goods, while Beijing has retaliated with tariffs of 125 per cent. Trump said he would not lower the tariffs to get China to the negotiating table, but could eventually lower them as part of a broader deal.
“At some point, I’m going to lower them because otherwise, you could never do business with them. And they want to do business very much,” Trump added.
