Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has warned that TikTok will be shut off for U.S. users unless China grants Washington greater control over the platform.
“We’ve made the decision. You can’t have Chinese control and have something on 100 million American phones,” Lutnick told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on July 24.
TikTok’s future in the United States has been uncertain since Congress passed a bill last year that would ban the app in the country unless its Chinese owner, ByteDance, divested from it.
President Donald Trump recently extended the deadline for Chinese divestiture for a third time, giving ByteDance until Sept. 17 to act—or face a shutdown.
Trump’s latest deadline extension came as ByteDance, which has links to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), was nearing a June 19 deadline to sell its video-sharing platform under a national security law that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld earlier this year. In May, Trump said he would extend the June deadline, noting that TikTok helped him reach younger audiences during the 2024 presidential campaign.
Members of Congress who supported the law mandating that ByteDance divest itself of its ownership of TikTok have cited national security concerns due to the company’s ties to the CCP.
During a congressional hearing in 2024, then-FBI Director Christopher Wray said that the data on U.S. users that TikTok collects, combined with ByteDance’s algorithm, would enable influence operations that are “extraordinarily difficult to detect, which is part of what makes the national security concerns represented by TikTok so significant.”
Trump said in a Jan. 20 executive order that first paused enforcement of the divest-or-ban law that he wants to find a solution that “protects national security while saving a platform used by 170 million Americans.”
“I guess I have a warm spot for TikTok that I didn’t have originally,” Trump said as he signed the order.
Since then, Trump has extended the go-dark deadline two more times, while repeatedly teasing a TikTok purchase deal that would see ByteDance cede control and allow the platform to continue operating in the United States.
The president said in early July that the United States “pretty much” had a deal secured for the acquisition of TikTok’s U.S. operations, although he was unsure whether China would approve the sale.
“I’m not confident, but I think so,“ Trump said when asked whether he was confident that China would approve the sale. ”President Xi and I have a great relationship. I think the deal is good for China, and it’s good for us.”
In Thursday’s remarks to CNBC, Lutnick said that if China fails to approve the deal, the app “is going to go dark” in the United States.
“Basically, Americans will have control. Americans will own the technology. Americans will control the algorithm. That’s something Donald Trump is willing to do,” Lutnick said.
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