A US-based version of social network TikTok appears to be eminent.
Apple has been told it is allowed to keep the TikTok app in the App Store, following a US government assurance that no action should be taken for another 75 days.
US Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a letter to Apple and Google on Friday, April 4, requesting that the company follow the new executive order from President Trump. That executive order further extended a previous reprieve from a threatened US ban of TikTok.
President Trump initially gave the Chinese-owned ByteDance until April 5 to sell the service to an American company, or be banned from use in the US. The new extension sets a new deadline for compliance to June 18.
US officials speaking off the record cited by Bloomberg on Sunday have said they are now once again close to securing a deal to create a US version of TikTok, with the new owner being majority owned by US investors. The app currently remains available on both the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store.
In signing the extension, President Trump said that a deal for US ownership requires more work to ensure all regulatory approvals have been obtained. Therefore, it requires more time to conclude the deal.
Ironically, a previous deal that was about to close fell apart due to President Trump’s imposition of additional levies on China-made imports, raising the tariff to 54 percent.
The new arrangement to buy or license TikTok’s technology and platform comes from a consortium of investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Blackstone, and Oracle. Reportedly, the effort is called “TikTok America.”
Bytedance’s existing US investors would control about 30 percent of the new company, with the outside investors owning 50 percent. ByteDance would retain a 20 percent stake in the US version.
The original bone of contention with TikTok owner ByteDance and the US government across both the Trump and Biden administrations is that TikTok’s user data was being stored on Chinese servers. As a result, Chinese authorities could request to examine that data at will.
