TikTok is now racing against time as the U.S. government signals it will shut down the popular short-form video app unless its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, fully relinquishes control to American interests.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Thursday confirmed that the Trump administration is standing firm on its position.
“We’ve made the decision. You can’t have Chinese control and have something on 100 million American phones,” he said.
Register for Tekedia Mini-MBA edition 19 (Feb 9 – May 2, 2026): big discounts for early bird.
Tekedia AI in Business Masterclass opens registrations.
Join Tekedia Capital Syndicate and co-invest in great global startups.
Register for Tekedia AI Lab: From Technical Design to Deployment (next edition begins Jan 24 2026).
The demand, which includes ceding control over TikTok’s core technology, data, and algorithm, comes months after President Donald Trump signed a law mandating ByteDance to divest the U.S. arm of TikTok or face a nationwide ban. Congress passed the bill in 2024 after years of mounting concern that the Chinese government could exploit the platform to collect data from American users or manipulate the information ecosystem.
Yet despite multiple public assurances from Trump that the deal would be closed “sooner than expected,” negotiations have dragged on. The President has extended the deadline three times since taking office in January. The current and possibly final deadline is September 17.
“Basically, Americans will have control. Americans will own the technology. Americans will control the algorithm. That’s something Donald Trump is willing to do,” Lutnick said on CNBC.
China Seen as the Final Obstacle
While finding the right buyer remains a major hurdle, observers say the deal’s real bottleneck is Beijing. Even if a U.S. entity is ready to acquire TikTok’s American operations, ByteDance would still need regulatory clearance from the Chinese government — a requirement that analysts believe may be difficult, if not impossible, to obtain.
Beijing previously opposed a forced divestiture when a similar situation unfolded under Trump’s first administration in 2020, calling the move “bullying” and “political oppression of Chinese companies.” The Chinese government also revised its export control rules to limit the transfer of certain technologies — including content recommendation algorithms — widely seen as a move to complicate any TikTok sale.
This makes the current standoff more than just a commercial negotiation. It’s part of a broader geopolitical conflict over data sovereignty, surveillance, and control of the next generation of global tech platforms.
Buyers Still in Flux as Time Runs Out
Earlier this month, Reuters reported that private equity giant Blackstone pulled out of a consortium that had been preparing a bid for TikTok’s U.S. assets, dealing a major blow to the prospect of a swift resolution. Though Trump recently told Fox News that he has a group of “very wealthy people” ready to buy the platform, there’s no confirmation yet of a finalized buyer or a definitive agreement.
Meanwhile, ByteDance has not made any public statement about the current state of negotiations or whether it’s seeking Chinese approval to move forward. As the deadline approaches, legal and commercial uncertainty looms over the future of one of the world’s most influential digital platforms.
If ByteDance fails to complete the divestiture in time — or if China blocks the sale — TikTok would be effectively banned from operating in the United States. That would mean the app, which has become a staple of American digital culture, particularly among Gen Z, would disappear from app stores and lose access to U.S. infrastructure, such as cloud hosting and payments systems.
Lutnick was blunt in outlining the government’s position: “If China doesn’t approve that deal, then TikTok is going to go dark.”
With the clock ticking toward September 17, all eyes are now on Beijing and the unresolved deal that could redefine not just TikTok’s future, but the contours of global tech governance.