United States President Donald Trump expressed openness on Tuesday to tech mogul Elon Musk acquiring TikTok, the popular video-sharing app currently under scrutiny due to its Chinese ownership.
“I would be if he wanted to buy it,” Trump told reporters when asked if he would support Musk, the world’s richest man and owner of the social media platform X, purchasing TikTok. Musk has been at the forefront of cost-cutting initiatives in the new administration.
TikTok is grappling with a US law mandating its divestiture from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, or face a nationwide ban. Concerns over potential misuse of the app by the Chinese government for espionage or covert influence through data collection and content manipulation prompted the legislation.
In one of his initial executive actions, Trump paused the enforcement of the law, which would have rendered TikTok illegal in the United States on Sunday, a day before his second-term inauguration. His order directed the attorney general to delay the law’s implementation for 75 days.
To ensure TikTok’s continued operations in the US, Trump proposed a potential 50-50 partnership between ByteDance and “the United States,” though he offered no specifics on how this arrangement might work.
Despite its reprieve, TikTok briefly went offline in the US late Saturday as the sale deadline loomed, leaving millions of users unable to access the app. Services were restored on Sunday, with TikTok attributing the turnaround to Trump’s intervention and the cooperation of its server provider, Oracle.
However, significant challenges remain. Apple and Google have yet to make TikTok available in their app stores, preventing new downloads and updates for existing users. Companies that violate the law still face fines of up to $5,000 per user for allowing access to the app.
Asked whether he uses TikTok, Trump responded, “No, but… I think I’ll get it right now.”
Speculation about a potential sale to Musk gained traction last week following reports that Chinese officials were exploring the idea of selling TikTok’s US operations to Musk’s platform, X. TikTok, however, firmly denied the claims.
The situation leaves TikTok at the center of a heated debate, balancing national security concerns and the demands of its vast American user base.