On June 17, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that President Donald Trump would sign another executive order extending the TikTok ban-or-sell deadline for an additional 90 days.
The executive order, which was first signed on January 20, shields app stores like the Apple App Store and Google Play from the consequences of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. Under this law, these stakeholders risk incurring expensive penalties for every day the app remains available on their stores.
However, as pointed out by The Verge, these extensions by Trump aren’t legally codified. Instead, app store owners must rely solely on the Trump administration’s promise that they won’t get penalised.
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President Emeritus Joe Biden initially signed off on the law back in April 2024. Under the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, TikTok was legally required to either sever its ties with Chinese parent company ByteDance, or face a ban on January 19.
Once January 19 rolled around, with no deals on the horizon, the app went dark. However, it was revived the next day when Trump signed an executive order extending the ban-or-sell deadline to April.
By the time the April deadline rolled around, it seemed like Trump and ByteDance were close to a deal involving cloud-based platform Oracle. But things broke down after Trump imposed high trade tariffs against China, causing them to back out of the deal. Since then, things have been in limbo.
In a statement (via The Verge), Leavitt said that Trump and China are “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.” But with three extensions, the idea of a deal being closed is looking less and less likely.
