US president Donald Trump has extended the deadline for ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, to sell the app’s US operations to September 17, 2025.

This extension, announced on June 20, 2025, postpones the previous June 19 deadline set by a 2024 law requiring ByteDance to divest TikTok’s US assets or face a shutdown.

This decision marks the third extension granted by Trump since the law took effect. Previous deadlines were set for January and April of this year.

According to White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt, the administration would use the additional time to finalize a deal to protect US consumer data.

A proposed deal to separate TikTok’s US operations into a new entity backed by American investors has encountered challenges. These challenges include opposition from Chinese authorities.

In March, Trump suggested reducing tariffs on Chinese goods to facilitate the agreement, but negotiations stalled after Beijing indicated it would not approve the arrangement.

🔗 Source: Reuters

🧠 Food for thought

1️⃣ Forced divestitures have become a pattern in US-China tech relations

The TikTok case isn’t an isolated incident but part of a trend of increasing scrutiny of Chinese tech investments.

In 2019, CFIUS forced health tech startup PatientsLikeMe to divest from its Chinese majority owner iCarbonX over similar data security concerns 1.

That same year, the dating app Grindr was required to sell off its Chinese ownership, reflecting CFIUS’s expanded focus on personal data as a national security matter 2.

These actions contributed to a dramatic decline in Chinese direct investment in the US, dropping from $46 billion in 2016 to just $4.8 billion in 2018 1.

The TikTok situation demonstrates how data security has become central to US-China tech tensions, with the government increasingly willing to intervene in private business to address perceived national security risks.

2️⃣ Trump’s TikTok approach creates unprecedented legal tensions

Trump’s repeated extensions create a direct conflict between executive action and congressional intent that has few historical parallels.