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The Trump administration granted ByteDance a 15-day extension of a divestiture order that ordered the Chinese company to sell its short video sharing app TikTok by Thursday, the company said in a court statement on Friday.
ByteDance said it now has until November 27 to reach an agreement. The company is in talks about a deal with Walmart Inc. and Oracle Corp. to transfer TikTok’s US assets into a new entity.
The US Treasury did not immediately comment on Friday.
ByteDance filed a petition on Tuesday with the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, challenging the Trump administration’s divestment order.
US President Donald Trump in an August 14 order ordered ByteDance to divest the app within 90 days. That window of time ran out on Thursday.
The Trump administration argues that TikTok poses national security concerns, saying US users’ personal data could be obtained from the Chinese government. TikTok, which has over 100 million US users, denies the allegations.
Trump said the Walmart-Oracle deal had its “blessing”.
Ownership is a thorny issue
A major problem that has persisted concerns the ownership structure of the new company, TikTok Global, which allegedly owns the US assets of TikTok.
In the court statement on Tuesday, ByteDance said it made a fourth proposal last Friday that was to address US concerns by “creating a new entity, wholly owned by Oracle, Walmart and existing US investors in ByteDance, which would be was responsible for managing TikTok US user data and content moderation. “
Separate restrictions on TikTok by the U.S. Department of Commerce have been blocked by federal courts, including transaction restrictions that were due to go into effect Thursday that TikTok warned they may actually ban the app’s use in the United States.
A Department of Commerce ban on Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google offering TikTok for download for new US users that was set to take effect on September 27 was also blocked.
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