President Donald Trump said he would consider lowering tariff rates imposed on China to secure Beijing’s support for a sale of the U.S. operations of ByteDance Ltd.’s social video platform TikTok to an American company.
“Every point in tariffs is worth more than TikTok,” Trump told reporters Wednesday in the Oval Office. He suggested that “in order to get China” to agree to a sale, “maybe I’d give them a reduction in tariffs.”
Trump was speaking at an event to announce a new 25% duty on automobile imports, ahead of a planned announcement next week on his sweeping reciprocal tariff program. The president has already imposed 20% levies on goods imported from China.
Trump predicted he would be able to secure at least the outline of a deal for TikTok by next week, but said if an agreement was not completed he would move to extend the deadline.
“We’re going to have a form of a deal, but if it’s not finished, it’s not a big deal. We’ll just extend it,” Trump said. “I have the right to have the deal and to extend it if I want.”
Under a law signed last year by President Joe Biden, ByteDance was required to sell TiKTok’s U.S. operations by Jan. 19. TikTok briefly paused its service earlier this year, but a full shutdown was narrowly averted when Trump signed an executive order to delay enforcement of that law by 90 days—until April 5—and buy additional time to secure a deal.
‘Bad signal’
If China agrees to this deal, it might send a “bad signal” to other firms that hostile takeovers are acceptable, according to Josef Gregory Mahoney, a professor of international relations at Shanghai’s East China Normal University.
“Beijing will be loath to encourage Trump to cherry pick his way through China’s best international brands as the price for dropping the tariffs that he imposed in the first place,” Mahoney said, adding that Beijing has already criticized CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd.’s plan to sell its Panama ports.
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump earlier this month said he was negotiating with four different potential bidders for TikTok, but did not publicly identify them.
Publicly known bidders include a group led by billionaire Frank McCourt and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, another featuring tech entrepreneur Jesse Tinsley and YouTube star MrBeast, and a merger offer by San Francisco-based Perplexity AI.
Oracle Corp. is also weighing a proposal for a sale of the app’s U.S. operations that would have it provide security assurances and obtain a small stake in a new American entity while potentially leaving the app’s influential algorithm in Chinese hands, according to people familiar with the matter.
Any deal would require approval not only from Trump, but from TikTok’s parent and the Chinese government. Letting ByteDance retain the algorithm would make it easier to win over the company and Chinese authorities, but would risk failing to comply with the divestiture law.
Trump, who once sought to ban TikTok himself, has become a cheerleader for the popular video-sharing app, which he credits with helping his 2024 presidential campaign bolster outreach to younger voters.
