The US Treasury has extended the November 27 deadline assigned to TikTok’s parent company ByteDance, which required the chinese tech giant to sell the platform’s American operations to avoid being banned in the country. The deadline has been extended for seven days, and the latest date to sell TikTok in America is December 4.
This is the latest development in the TikTok saga, which first started in August when President Donald Trump issued an executive order to ban transactions with the Chinese company, ByteDance.
Trump’s administration has alleged that TikTok’s parent has ties with the Chinese government, and therefore it threatens America’s national security and user privacy. The order assigned a deadline to ByteDance to sell TikTok’s U.S operations to remain functional in the country, not complying to which would lead to a ban.
After several extensions, the November 27 deadline has again been extended to December 4. “The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) has granted ByteDance a one-week extension, from November 27, 2020 to December 4, 2020 to allow time to review a revised submission that the Committee recently received,” a Treasury spokesperson said.
Trump administration’s order has also been challenged in the court and ByteDance has continually denied any user-privacy and national security threat allegations. Besides the lawsuit the company itself filed against the Trump administration, a separate case filed by the content creators of TikTok in October, stopped the Nov 12 ban from taking place on the TIkTok app. Though Trump administration has recently appealed against the order which stopped the ban.
The order issued by the Trump administration requires ByteDance to sell its U.S operations to an American company. ByteDance, Oracle and Walmart had almost reached a deal in which the two American companies will buy a stake in TikTok, creating TikTok Global. In the proposed deal, Oracle would handle the data aspect and Walmart, the commercial aspect of TikTok.
However, the deal was never completed, and still remains uncertain as the Chinese company continues to delay it. Bytedance is reluctant to sell its U.S TikTok business, and the uncertainty is further heightened by the expected transfer of power to President-elect Joe Biden, who is likely to have a different stance on the ongoing dispute.
