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Explainer

Trump Is Delaying the US TikTok Ban Again. What’s Next?

TikTok, which entered the US market in 2016, has 170 million users in the country, and the platform’s US business has been valued as high as $50 billion.Photographer: Gabby Jones/Bloomberg

One of the first actions President Donald Trump took at the outset of his second presidency was granting a stay of execution for TikTok. Two and a half months later, he granted a second, and on June 18, he promised a third.

Under a law passed by Congress in 2024, the popular video app was facing a nationwide ban starting Jan. 19 after its Chinese parent company, ByteDance Ltd., failed to divest the app’s US operations to ease national security concerns. But a day later, Trump intervened, signing an executive order designed to delay enforcement of that law and give ByteDance more time to find a buyer. On April 4, a day before the ban was to take effect again, he signed a second executive order extending the deadline an additional 75 days, and on June 18, he announced plans to extend it a third time, for another 90 days.