MW TikTok likely to get new Trump extension as shutdown deadline nears and Amazon joins fray

By Victor Reklaitis

E-commerce heavyweight said to be pursuing takeover of Chinese-owned social-media platform's U.S. operation, vying with bidders Oracle and Blackstone, with the White House's 75-day reprieve expiring on Saturday

TikTok is generating headlines again this week as President Donald Trump was expected to be meeting Wednesday with aides about an investment deal that could keep the Chinese-controlled platform running in the U.S. as a key deadline nears.

A Trump executive order on Inauguration Day said that for 75 days the Justice Department should not enforce a bipartisan law that aims to ban TikTok nationwide as long as it remains controlled by its Chinese parent company, ByteDance Ltd.

With that 75-day period due to end Saturday, analysts continue to expect that the most likely next step is another effort by Trump to delay a U.S. ban so there can be more time to finalize some sort of deal on the running of TikTok's American operation.

Among the possible U.S. investors in TikTok are software giant Oracle Corp. $(ORCL)$, which counts the platform as a major customer, and private-equity giant Blackstone Inc. $(BX)$. Also making a bid is e-commerce heavyweight Amazon.com Inc. $(AMZN)$, according to multiple published reports.

Michael Sobolik, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank, told MarketWatch two weeks ago that "some sort of another extension" is the most likely scenario, and it's "completely unlikely" that TikTok will go dark on Saturday. Sobolik said Wednesday that not much has changed in his outlook for the video-sharing app, adding that the next two or three days will reveal a lot.

Wedbush analysts led by Dan Ives offered a similar take, saying in a note Tuesday that they "expect some outline of a deal to be announced by the White House before Friday night."

"A deadline extension for 30 days or longer is likely in the cards as well to fully iron out the complex deal structure," the Wedbush team said. They also said they anticipate that TikTok's valuable algorithm for recommending videos will be kept under ByteDance's control but Oracle could be "a linchpin to safeguarding U.S. consumer data on TikTok." In addition, the analysts noted that Chinese ownership could end up higher than 20% and that would have to be negotiated because it would violate the U.S. law that threatens to ban the social-media platform - 2024's Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.

An announcement about TikTok's future could come as soon as Wednesday, according to a CNBC report. Meanwhile, Fox Business Network's Charlie Gasparino reported that there are concerns from potential investors about the liability provisions in the 2024 law, so there could be a delay for any announcement.

Related: TikTok returns to Apple and Google app stores. Why that's an $850 billion risk.

Just 34% of U.S. adults express support for a TikTok ban, according to a Pew Research Center survey released last month. That's down from 50% in March 2023. The percentage of Americans who view TikTok as a national-security threat also has declined, dropping to 49% from 59% two years ago.

Trump told reporters on Sunday that he'd "like to see TikTok remain alive."

"We have a lot of potential buyers," he said. "There's tremendous interest in TikTok."

The Associated Press contributed.

Now read: Trump says there are bigger China threats than TikTok. Here's where he could be going wrong.

-Victor Reklaitis

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April 02, 2025 15:04 ET (19:04 GMT)

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