What does Trump’s executive order mean and who might buy it?

US President Donald Trump signed an executive order giving TikTok a 75-day extension to comply with a law banning the app if it doesn’t sell.

The social media platform was briefly halted in the United States days before Trump took office, after the Supreme Court rejected an attempt by its Chinese owner ByteDance to overturn the legislation.

TikTok came back online with a short message thanking Trump for his “efforts.”

that An executive order is an instruction from the president Which has the weight of the law behind it.

But Trump’s order does not overturn the ban.

Instead, he is asking the US Attorney General not to enforce the law for now, which experts have predicted would be his first step.

This buys time to manage and, the order states, “determine the appropriate course of action.”

Trump raised the possibility of TikTok becoming a joint venture, telling reporters that he was seeking a 50-50 partnership between “the United States” and ByteDance, though he did not provide any further details on how that would work.

For now, though, the order creates a situation where the President is directly opposing the ruling passed by the Supreme Court, which I upheld the law To ban TikTok on January 17.

It said the ban was “designed to prevent China — a designated foreign adversary — from leveraging its control of ByteDance to obtain the personal data of American TikTok users.”

Technically, even after 75 days, it would be possible for Trump to allow the law to remain in effect but ask the Justice Department to continue ignoring it.

The government will effectively tell Apple and Google that they won’t be penalized for continuing to allow people to download TikTok onto their devices, meaning the law will remain in place but will essentially be redundant.

It is not clear whether the companies will continue to offer the app under these circumstances.

ByteDance has long insisted that its assets are not for sale, but could that change with a new boss?

When Trump signed the executive order, he said, “Every rich person has called me” to indicate his interest in TikTok.

Trump appears to want to find a compromise that is consistent with the spirit of the law rather than its letter, and is floating the idea of ​​joint ownership of TikTok.

“What I think about saying to someone is buy it and give half of it to the United States, half of it, and we’ll give you a pass,” he said during a press conference on artificial intelligence.

He said he had met with TikTok’s “major owners,” adding that he was “worthless” if he didn’t get the kind of clearance he had in mind — but that he would be worth “a trillion dollars” if he was allowed to. Operates in the United States.

He also said he would be open to selling the app to Larry Ellison, co-founder of Oracle, as well as Elon Musk.

“I will if he wants to buy it,” he said.

Previous names linked to the TikTok purchase include billionaire Frank McCourt and Canadian businessman Kevin O’Leary – a famous investor in Shark Tank, the US version of Dragon’s Den.

The world’s biggest YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson – also known as MrBeast – He also claimed to be running After a number of investors contacted him following a previous tweet that expressed his interest.

An American search engine called Perplexity AI has reportedly offered to merge with TikTok.

In March 2024, Trump’s former Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, said he wanted to form a group to buy the app but it is not clear whether he is still seeking this.

TikTok was the only ByteDance app to return immediately — but only for people who already had the app.

It is still not available for download from the Apple and Google app stores.

Two other apps that remain inaccessible are Lemon8, another social media app that has been compared to Pinterest, and CapCut, a video editing app.

Meanwhile, Marvel Snap, a digital card game published by a subsidiary of ByteDance, is now available again after it also crashed – surprising even US-based developer Second Dinner.

TikTok says it will have 170 million US users who spent – on average – 51 minutes per day on the app in 2024.

Experts say competitors like Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts could benefit if Trump’s efforts to fully restore TikTok are unsuccessful.

Users bring in advertisers – so this could be a big financial boost for those platforms.

“The top marketing executives we spoke to confirmed they would shift their media dollars to Meta and Google if they could no longer advertise on TikTok,” said Kelsey Chickering, an analyst at market research firm Forrester.

Other potential winners include Twitch, which made its name by hosting live streams — a popular feature on TikTok. Twitch is particularly known for gamers, although its other content is expanding as well.

Other Chinese-owned platforms, Like Xiao Hongshu — known as RedNote among its US users — has also seen rapid growth in the US and UK.