The White House is again giving TikTok's Chinese parent company more time to satisfy its national security concerns, rather than initiating legal action, a source familiar with the situation tells Axios.
The state of play: China's ByteDance had until Friday to satisfy national security concerns raised by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS), which is chaired by Treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin. This was the company's third deadline, with CFIUS having provided two earlier extensions.
What now: The source says that CFIUS is not providing another formal extension, but rather a de facto continuation as the two sides carry on with negotiations.
- Talks had ground to a halt around the election, but have picked back up again in recent weeks, with some outstanding issues newly resolved.
- The proposed plan, which President Trump agreed to in principle back in September, would be for TikTok to be controlled by a group of U.S. entities, including Oracle, Walmart and several venture capital firms, with ByteDance to retain a minority stake.
CFIUS still could ask the U.S. Department of Justice to take action against ByteDance for violating its order, given that no formal extension has been provided.
- Trump's executive order that TikTok be shut down in the U.S. — which is different than the CFIUS order — has been temporarily restrained by the courts.
Neither the Treasury Department nor TikTok responded to Axios' requests for comment.