Bipartisan critics of keeping TikTok operating in the US simply have too much other stuff on their plate to muster a fight should President Trump once again extend the deadline for the Chinese-owned app to divest in the US, On The Money has learned.
That’s the word from sources close to the White House and key figures in Congress who have debated whether TikTok should go dark in a couple weeks over concerns it’s essentially spyware for the Chinese Communist Party in its quest for global domination.
As On The Money reported on Tuesday, here are the scenarios of TikTok’s short-term fate: A Wall Street banker involved in the deal to sell the app to US investors said Trump could be persuaded to let TikTok “go dark” and disappear from app stores on June 19 if he believes it will give him a strategic advantage in the complex and at times acrimonious trade deal negotiations with the Chinese.
But more likely is that he throws TikTok yet another lifeline, sources say. Trump really loves the app (he thinks it helped get him elected in 2024 no matter how much it’s spying on us). He is poised to extend the TikTok ban deadline – for the third time – as the White House and China prepare to hold trade talks, which are in their nascent stages with Trump speaking directly with China President Xi Jinping by phone on Thursday.
Plus, there might not be that much pushback as there was in the past. Another extension could happen without much of a fuss because Congress – including its bipartisan TikTok haters – is probably too distracted with the Big Beautiful Bill, pruning excesses amid criticism from none-other-than Elon Musk, extending the Trump 1 tax cuts and the China-US trade talks to really lose that much sleep if Trump does extend, they say.
“There’s an 80% probability it gets a 75-day extension and stays lit up,” said one Wall Street executive who is part of the on-going Trump-led negotiation to save TikTok from disappearing through a deal that will transform its ownership to majority US hands.
“Apparently, it dropped to the list of issues on the China negotiations, and the tax bill has sucked the oxygen out of the room.”
The White House had no comment.
TikTok, through its Beijing-based parent company ByteDance, has long denied it is a surveillance tool for the CCP, but doubts abound. Trump, of course, wasn’t always a TikTok lover. He sought its ban back during his first term.
The app went dark for a few hours after the divest-or-ban law, signed by former President Joe Biden, went into effect Jan. 19.
But it got a reprieve when Trump signed the first extension with an executive order after returning to the White House.
He then gave TikTok another lifeline in April as a deal to put TikTok into the hands of a majority-owned US company was nearing the finish line, as On The Money previously reported.
However, that was throttled by Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff war that was particularly tough on China, one of our biggest trading partners, but a global adversary that doesn’t open its markets to US companies looking to sell stuff on the Mainland and tap into its growing consumer market.
The consortium of private sector players, if the deal is completed, will be led by tech giant Oracle, founded by Trump friend and supporter Larry Ellison.
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