President Donald Trump said tariffs on China could hinge on a TikTok ownership deal, and he signed an executive order to keep the popular short-video platform online in the United States for 75 days.
Within hours of his inauguration on Monday, Trump postponed a deadline for TikTok's Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell its stake in the app or face a ban in the country.
Trump said the U.S. "should be entitled to half of TikTok" if the app continues to operate after the deadline, and he "certainly" could impose tariffs on China if it refuses a deal, which he said would be "hostile." Behavior" ".
He said tariffs could be as high as 100%. "Ultimately (Beijing) will approve it because we will impose tariffs on China," Trump said when signing the order. "I'm not saying I would do it, but you can definitely do it."
China was one of three countries Trump threatened to impose tariffs on his first day in office. On Monday, he said he may impose 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico starting on February 1.
But he did not impose 60% tariffs on Chinese imports as he promised during the campaign, which would mark a new phase in the trade war with Beijing during his first term.
The move to delay tariffs on China appears to provide bargaining chips for the TikTok deal. Trump spoke to Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Friday and said he had raised the TikTok issue, but Beijing did not confirm the discussion.
TikTok was temporarily unavailable to some 170 million U.S. users at midnight on Sunday, after the initial deadline under the "divestment or ban" law, but the service was restored hours later.
The executive order says companies that distribute and host TikTok, including Apple, Google and cloud provider Oracle, will not be held liable for violating the law during the 75-day extension. Under the law, service providers face fines of $5,000 per user.
But Tom Cotton, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, warned the companies on Sunday that they risked "devastating bankruptcy" if they violated the law.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew launched a charm offensive after Trump said during the campaign he wanted to "save" the app.
Zhou attended the inauguration with tech billionaires Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg and sat next to Trump's nominee for director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, drawing criticism from some observers .
Many U.S. politicians and security officials believe the Chinese government could use TikTok to gain access to Americans' personal information to facilitate espionage and exploit the app's algorithms for propaganda. TikTok denies Beijing has any control over the app.
TikTok also said it would not be technically feasible to divest within the time required by law. Beijing has expressed opposition to the sale.
Still, Trump said the U.S. should get "half of the value of TikTok" if the app were to continue operating, adding: "If I don't do this deal, it's worth nothing. If I do this deal, it could be worth a trillion dollars."
Last week, the Financial Times reported that Chinese officials were discussing using Musk, a close friend of Trump's, as a broker for a potential sale of TikTok's U.S. operations. Musk met with Chinese Vice President Han Zheng on Monday, who was attending Trump's inauguration.
He also called TikTok's presence in the United States "unbalanced" while Western platforms such as his social media site X are banned in China, adding that "something needs to change."
Beijing did not immediately respond to Trump's threat to impose tariffs if it does not agree to the TikTok deal.
On Monday, China's Foreign Ministry said any decision on TikTok's ownership should be "at the company's discretion based on market principles."
Additional reporting by Aimee Williams in Washington