The US Treasury has extended the November 27 deadline to sell popular social media platform TikTok’s American business by seven days.
A Treasury spokesperson said that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) has granted a one-week extension to ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, till December 4, 2020, in order to review a revised submission submitted by it.
President Donald Trump’s administration had threatened to ban the app, which has close to 100 million US users, citing severe national security concerns and claims of its potential use in Chinese espionage.
The ban has been challenged in multiple courts, including one in Washington, and in a separate filing by the app’s creators in a Pennsylvania court. The latter blocked the ban on October 30, but the government is currently appealing the order.
Before losing his bid for re-election this month, Trump had claimed that TikTok can be used to collect data on Americans by the Chinese, a claim the company has firmly denied. The White House has said that in order to avert a ban, TikTok must become a US firm owned by American investors.
However, the sale of the app hinges on Beijing’s approval, and giving up control of the social media sensation which features clips of everything from dance routines to politics, seems unlikely for the Chinese capital.
In August, China’s commerce ministry issued a set of new rules adding “civilian use” to the list of types of technology which have export restrictions. This could make it even more difficult for ByteDance to sell TikTok.
Earlier this year, Silicon Valley giant Oracle seemed all set to become the data partner for a newly incorporated TikTok Global, with Walmart signing up as a commercial partner.
President Trump had also indicated his approval for the takeover, but so far, there has been no progress on that front. With tensions between Washington and Beijing at an all-time high, owing to trade and national security concerns, the US administration has also banned Chinese tech giant Huawei from using US technology and barred it from conducting deals involving wireless networks.
