President Donald Trump will grant the popular short-video app TikTok another temporary reprieve so it has time to find a buyer to remain operating in the U.S., according to the White House today.

The app, owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance Ltd., has been at the center of national security concerns for years. Following legislation passed in 2024, a deadline was given for it to divest or face a ban in the U.S., where it had around 170 million users at the time. The app was given until Jan. 19, and though it did experience a month-long suspension when it was removed the app stores of Google LLC and Apple Inc., President Donald Trump signed an executive order that delayed the ban.

The latest extension, now the third, provides legal cover for service providers in the U.S. that are subject to the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. Under the law, they could potentially be fined $5,000 per U.S. user who accesses, maintains or updates the application — a huge sum.

“As he has said many times, President Trump does not want TikTok to go dark,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to CNN. “This extension will last 90 days, which the Administration will spend working to ensure this deal is closed so that the American people can continue to use TikTok with the assurance that their data is safe and secure.”

It remains unclear if the app will be sold to a firm in the U.S. For a time, the idea of Oracle Corp. taking over U.S. operations was floated, but it seems that fell through, while the possibility of Elon Musk acquiring the app through X Corp. didn’t get out of the starting blocks. China and U.S.’s tariff wars seem to have derailed more recent talks of any kind of deal with U.S. investors.

A complete ban in the U.S. would be an extremely unpopular move given the app’s huge popularity and the fact that an estimated 7 million small businesses in the U.S. use the app. TikTok said it contributed $24.2 billion to the economy in 2024.

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