US President Donald Trump has once again delayed a potential TikTok ban in the US.
The news comes after China reportedly stalled on a deal to sell its US operations in response to Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs.
The China-based social media giant was set to be banned in the US a day before Trump returned to office for a second term as President, but he delayed the ban.
The social media app was due to be banned unless ByteDance, its China-based owner, agreed to sell its US operations to a non-Chinese buyer.
On April 4th, President Trump announced that the deadline would once again be delayed by 75 days due to the potential sales deal ‘requiring more work to ensure all necessary approvals are signed’.
“My Administration has been working very hard on a Deal to SAVE TIKTOK, and we have made tremendous progress,” he wrote in a piece on social media.
“We hope to continue working in Good Faith with China, who I understand are not very happy about our Reciprocal Tariffs.
“We do not want TikTok to ‘go dark’. We look forward to working with TikTok and China to close the Deal.”
President Trump has increased tariffs from 20% to 54% on Chinese goods coming into the US.
In response, Beijing said it would put a 34% tariff on imports of all US products from April 10th.
However, the US President has said he would be willing to reduce tariffs on China in order to solidify a deal for TikTok.
He is reportedly in talks with four companies for a deal but has not revealed who they are.
TikTok is still banned on all government phones in the UK in spite of the fact of the recently launched @ukgov account, which now has just shy of 60k followers and has posted a raft of public service messages.