The White House had finalized a TikTok divestment deal earlier this week before President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff rollout flipped the Chinese government’s position on the issue, the Washington Examiner has learned.
Sources familiar with the negotiations say the White House, with lead negotiator Vice President JD Vance, had finalized a deal on Wednesday between American investors and TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, that would allow the social media giant to continue operating within the United States.
However, after Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff rollout in which the White House slapped a new 34% tariff on China, Beijing flipped its position, and ByteDance informed the White House that no sale could be agreed to ahead of trade negotiations.
In response to the new global trade war, China announced a 34% tariff on all imports from the U.S.
Washington Examiner sources say that the deal finalized earlier this week would have spun off TikTok’s U.S. presence into a separate company with majority American ownership and operations, though the names of the would-be investors were not revealed.
ByteDance would retain a minority stake in the new company, but it remains unclear if it would be at the 20% cap allowed by the divestment law President Joe Biden signed last year.
Those sources added that Vance personally negotiated for months with several possible U.S. investor groups in addition to ByteDance itself, but the concessions that Vance secured from China, who originally opposed a divestment of any kind, were no longer acceptable once the added tariffs were piled on.
According to those sources, the White House was still debating whether or not they could announce the tentative deal Friday morning before the president eventually announced a new extension of the deadline to keep TikTok online in the U.S.
On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order pushing the January deadline for TikTok to divest to April 5 and tapped Vance to lead the administration’s effort to find a U.S. buyer.
“My Administration has been working very hard on a Deal to SAVE TIKTOK, and we have made tremendous progress. The Deal requires more work to ensure all necessary approvals are signed, which is why I am signing an Executive Order to keep TikTok up and running for an additional 75 days,” Trump wrote on Truth Social while in South Florida on Friday.
A number of possible American buyers had emerged ahead of the April 5 deadline, including Amazon, Oracle, and Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary. Officials in the White House and the office of the vice president declined to answer questions about the sale on Friday.
Trump and Vance had voiced confidence that they could broker a sale ahead of April 5, but China would also have to approve the deal to prevent TikTok from ending its operations on U.S. soil. The president signaled last week that he would consider easing newly enacted tariffs on China to close any TikTok deal.
TRUMP EXTENDS TIKTOK SALE DEADLINE FOR ADDITIONAL 75 DAYS
Trump had previously supported banning the app and ByteDance from U.S. markets over national security concerns, but the president publicly flipped on the issue following the results of the 2024 general election.