Local time on April 17th, U.S. President Donald Trump held a press conference in the White House Oval Office and responded to the latest progress of the TikTok deal implementation. He said that the TikTok deal would be postponed until the thorough resolution of the Sino-US tariff trade issue.

In the past half month, the Sino-US trade war has intensified. At the meeting, Trump stated that the two sides were currently in dialogue on tariff issues, and he believed that within the next three to four weeks, an agreement could be reached to end this trade war. "To a certain extent, I will stop imposing tariffs because by then people won't buy anymore."

Regarding TikTok, Trump said that the TikTok deal was beneficial to China, and the relevant agreement was formulated by some of the world's best international companies. Previously, he had publicly stated that he might lower tariffs on China to facilitate the deal, forcing ByteDance to sell its U.S. business. This means that tariff reductions for China may become a "chip" in the TikTok deal.

According to the梳理 by Nanfang Daily reporter, on April 4th local time, Trump announced on social media that the TikTok ban order would be postponed again for 75 days, which means the next ban order should take effect on June 20th. Afterwards, ByteDance released a statement saying that the company was still negotiating with the US government and no agreement had been reached. There were still differences between the two sides on many key issues. According to Chinese law, any agreement must go through relevant review procedures.

This is not the first time the US side has postponed the enforcement of the "no sale, no ban" law for TikTok. On January 20th, Trump signed an executive order requiring the bill to temporarily not be enforced for 75 days in the future. During the 75-day grace period, the US Department of Justice shall not take any law enforcement actions based on the bill and shall not penalize any entity that does not comply with the law.

During the period when the fate of TikTok remained undecided, many American enterprises expressed interest in acquiring TikTok's US business. It is understood that at the beginning of April, Amazon once proposed a full acquisition offer; the artificial intelligence startup Perplexity AI submitted a proposal for a merger with TikTok's US subsidiary; in January, real estate tycoon Frank McCourt and others submitted a proposal to acquire TikTok's US assets; Lasner Capital, a major US private equity giant, also announced plans to acquire TikTok's US business for $474.5 billion. Previously, ByteDance repeatedly stated its refusal to any equity transfer, even going so far as to say "we would rather shut down than compromise".

Written by Nanfang Daily journalist Fan Wenyang

Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7494583647572410931/

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