If you are a TikTok user located in the U.S. who has been eagerly awaiting the social media platform’s ban on Dec. 16, 2025, there’s some encouraging news. The holiday spirit has arrived early — you can now start looking forward to Jan. 23 instead.
Dec. 16 was, theoretically, the final deadline for TikTok, which is operated by the Chinese tech company ByteDance, to complete the sale of its U.S. operations. This was mandated by law (the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act of 2024, should you wish to be precise) on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, 2025; in reality, there was a temporary shutdown.
The deadline has been prolonged four times through executive order since the Trump administration took office on that day. The initial postponement moved us to April 4, 2025. On that date, another executive order granted ByteDance until June 19, 2025 to finalize the sale. Then, surprise: a June 19 executive order shifted the deadline back to Dec. 16, 2025.
In the interim, we appear to be no closer to a TikTok sale. According to various reports, negotiations have stalled, partially due to the Chinese government’s unfavorable view of the U.S. coercing one of its companies and interpreting the deal as a form of leverage. Additionally, an endlessly extended deadline is not really a deadline at all.
Trump, who has often highlighted his substantial following on TikTok, may seem to be deliberately postponing the ban. However, he is also eager to take credit for the potential sale, and it doesn’t require an expert in international diplomacy to identify vulnerabilities in this high-stakes game. You only need to be aware of one of 2025’s most prevalent political maxims: TACO.
Indeed, on Sept. 25, Trump issued another executive order instructing the U.S. Attorney General to take “no action for noncompliance” against TikTok for “120 days from the date of this order” — which leads us to Jan. 23, 2026. Why? Because, Trump asserted, “a plan has been presented to me to undertake a qualified divestiture of TikTok’s United States operations.”
That proposal was reportedly centered around a $14 billion sale of TikTok’s U.S. division to a consortium that includes Oracle, which is headed by Trump supporter Larry Ellison. However, no additional details have surfaced, and the Chinese government maintains that the sale will not proceed — resulting in significant confusion.
So, will TikTok face an official ban in the U.S. on Jan. 23, 2026, 368 days after the initial ban was expected to occur? Your guess is as valid as ours — but given the evidence from the previous year, it likely wouldn’t be wise to stake your life savings on it.