President Trump has once again postponed enforcement of a bipartisan law aimed at effectively banning TikTok in the U.S., as efforts to separate the app from its China-based parent company, ByteDance, remain unresolved.
On Thursday, the president announced he had signed an executive order extending the deadline by 90 days, pushing it to September 17, 2025. This marks the third such delay since his inauguration in January. The previous extension expired the same day. The law, passed by Congress last year with bipartisan support, had originally given ByteDance until January 19 to fully divest from TikTok or face removal from U.S. app stores and web-hosting services due to national security concerns.
“I've just signed the Executive Order extending the Deadline for the TikTok closing for 90 days (September 17, 2025),” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
The orders have instructed the Justice Department not to pursue penalties against companies like Apple and Google for failing to remove TikTok from their platforms.
In a statement, TikTok thanked the president for the extension, saying:
“We are grateful for President Trump's leadership and support in ensuring that TikTok continues to be available for more than 170 million American users and 7.5 million U.S. businesses that rely on the platform as we continue to work with Vice President Vance’s office.”
Earlier this week, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed the president’s intention to delay enforcement.
“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,” Leavitt said Tuesday.
Back in April, the administration had reportedly reached a tentative agreement to spin off TikTok’s U.S. operations into a company majority-owned and operated by American investors. But after Trump announced sweeping tariffs, ByteDance informed the White House that Beijing would not approve any deal until trade issues were resolved, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Following that, ByteDance clarified that no final agreement had been reached and stressed that any deal would still require Chinese government approval.
Trump acknowledged the holdup in May, telling reporters, “We’ll probably have to get China’s approval. China’s never easy,” he added. “I’d like to save TikTok. I mean, TikTok was very good to me.”
