Trump says he may give China reduction in tariffs to get TikTok deal done

The icon for the video sharing TikTok app is seen on a smartphone, Feb. 28, 2023, in Marple Township, Pa. Montana’s governor is asking lawmakers to expand the state’s proposed TikTok ban to more social media companies that provide certain data to foreign adversaries. (Matt Slocum/AP Photo, File)

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would be willing to reduce tariffs to get a deal done with TikTok’s Chinese parent ByteDance to sell the short video app used by 170 million Americans.

ByteDance has an April 5 deadline to find a non-Chinese buyer for TikTok or face a U.S. ban on national security grounds that was supposed to have taken effect in January under a 2024 law.

Trump said he was willing to extend the deadline if an agreement over the social media app was not reached.

“With respect to TikTok, and China is going to have to play a role in that, possibly in the form of an approval, maybe, and I think they’ll do that. Maybe I’ll give them a little reduction in tariffs or something to get it done,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday.

TikTok did not immediately comment.

Getting China to agree to any deal to give up control of the TikTok unit worth tens of billions of dollars has always been the biggest sticking point to getting any agreement finalized. Trump has used tariffs as a bargaining chip in the TikTok negotiations in the past.

On January 20, his first day in office, he warned that he could impose tariffs on China if Beijing failed to approve a U.S. deal with TikTok.

Earlier this month, Trump hiked his additional tariffs on all imports from China to 20 per cent up from 10 per cent issued in February.

Vice President JD Vance has said he expects the general terms of an agreement that resolves the ownership of the social media platform to be reached by April 5.

The future of the app used by nearly half of all Americans has been up in the air since a law, passed last year with overwhelming bipartisan support, required ByteDance to divest TikTok by January 19.

The app briefly went dark in January after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the ban, but flickered back to life days later once Trump took office.

Trump quickly issued an executive order postponing enforcement of the law to April 5 and said last month that he could further extend that deadline to give himself time to shepherd a deal.

The White House has been involved to an unprecedented level in the closely watched deal talks, effectively playing the role of investment bank.

(Reporting by Dawn Chmielewski in Los Angeles; David Shepardson, Kanishka Singh, Nandita Bose and Andrea Shalal in Washington; Editing by Stephen Coates)