President Donald Trump on Wednesday said a TikTok deal is still “on the table” even as his trade war with Beijing continues to escalate, raising questions about whether an agreement is possible amid the current tensions.

Trump granted TikTok a second 75-day extension on Friday to comply with a U.S. law requiring it to divest its Chinese ownership to continue being available on U.S. app stores.

“My Administration has been working very hard on a Deal to SAVE TIKTOK, and we have made tremendous progress,” Trump posted on social media Friday. “The Deal requires more work to ensure all necessary approvals are signed.”

A spokesperson for ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, said there were outstanding issues, noting that “any agreement will be subject to approval under Chinese law.”

Reports, however, suggest that China and the U.S. were close to striking a deal before Trump’s tariffs on Beijing derailed that.

The U.S. side had reportedly green-lit a deal that, according to The New York Times, would involve a new group of investors owning 50% of a U.S. TikTok entity while Chinese investors would retain under 20% of it to comply with the divestiture bill signed into law by former President Joe Biden last year over national security concerns. While Beijing initially approved that agreement, it reportedly pulled back from it over the 34% tariffs Trump levied on the country last week.

The trade war between the world’s two largest economies has since escalated further with Trump announcing on Wednesday that the import tax on Chinese goods crossing into the U.S. would rise further to 125%.

Bill Reinsch, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Politico that Beijing is likely OK with the current impasse.

China is “really, really good at identifying things that don’t cause them pain, but do cause you pain,” Reinsch said. “And this is a classic case because I think they would prefer not to sell TikTok anyway.”

Still, Trump on Wednesday projected optimism that the Chinese will still lend their support to a deal to secure the popular platform’s future in the U.S.

“Well, it’s moving along but obviously I would say right now China is not exactly thrilled about signing it,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. “We have a deal with some very good people, some very rich companies that would do a great job with it. But we’re going to have to wait to see what’s going to happen with China.”

“It’s on the table very much. I think China’s going to want to do it actually,” he continued.

However, a person close to Vice President JD Vance, who has been tasked with leading the negotiations on the platform on behalf of the White House, told Politico an agreement is now on hold indefinitely.

Gary Clyde Hufbauer, a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, appeared downbeat on the prospects of a deal against the backdrop of the U.S.-China tariff war.

“Trump has gone so overboard with the tariffs and has gotten into such a mano a mano battle with President Xi [Jinping] that it’s hard for me to see that there’ll be some happy resolution from Trump’s standpoint on TikTok,” Hufbauer said, according to The Hill.

The New Yorker added that the talks about a potential TikTok ban are not just “a referendum on the app’s ability to addict children or to exert covert Chinese influence over an American user base” but actually point to a larger issue at hand.

“The battle over TikTok is about both sides trying to maintain a political grip on as much digital technology as possible,” according to the outlet.