President Donald Trump is keeping his cards close to his chest in the battle to keep TikTok alive, as the popular social media platform is relying on him to rescue it from a permanent ban.
On Monday evening, Trump took to the Oval Office to sign a stack of executive orders during one of his first acts as president. Among them was a measure to keep TikTok operational for another 75 days, saving it from immediately being banned under a law passed last year prohibiting the app because it is owned by a Chinese company.
However, even as he signed the executive orders, Trump put on his negotiating helmet, implying he wouldn’t approve a deal bringing TikTok back to grace unless the company accepted his demands. He also suggested TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, who has courted the president over the last few months as his company faces closure, is in a weak position where he would be forced to meet his stipulations.
“I may not or may do the deal. TikTok is worthless, worthless, if I don’t approve it. I learned that from the people that own it. If I don’t do the deal, it’s worth nothing; if I do the deal, it’s worth a trillion dollars,” Trump told members of the press before reviving his demands that the United States have a 50% ownership position in a possible TikTok deal. “I think the U.S. should get half of TikTok … I think we would have a joint venture. The U.S. should be entitled to get half of TikTok. But if the president doesn’t sign, it’s worthless. We’ll see what happens.”
When asked if Chew had said whether he was open to such a deal, Trump said, “I think he’d probably like it.”
“They [TikTok] really have nothing. It’s passed in Congress. It gives the president a right to make it, make a deal, or to close it, and we have 90 days to make that decision,” he told reporters. “There’s big value in TikTok. If it gets approved. If it doesn’t get approved, there’s no value. So if we create that value, why aren’t we entitled to like half?”
When asked why he is looking at rescuing TikTok despite concerns from critics who argue China is using the app to steal data from and spy on the U.S., Trump pushed back.
“Remember, Tiktok is largely about kids, young kids. If China is going to get information about young kids out of it, to be honest, I think we have bigger problems than that. But you know, when you take a look at telephones that are made in China and all the other things that are made in China, military equipment made in China, TikTok, I think TikTok is not their biggest problem,” he said.
“They make all sorts of things in China. Nobody ever complains about that. Here they’re complaining about this [TikTok] when so many different products are made in China nobody ever complained about,” Trump continued.
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He continued to praise the app for helping him reach young people during the 2024 presidential election.
“You know, I went on TikTok, and I won young people up by 36% … and Republicans typically don’t do too well with young people, but it’s a different Republican Party [now],” Trump said.