TikTok ban was due Dec. 16. There is a new deadline.

For those who’re a U.S.-based TikTok person who was anxiously counting down the times till the social media app was banned on Dec. 16, 2025, then there’s excellent news. Christmas got here early — you can begin counting down the times till Jan. 23 as an alternative.

Dec. 16 was, in principle, the most recent deadline for TikTok, which is owned by Chinese language tech agency ByteDance, to wrap up a sale of its U.S. enterprise. That was presupposed to occur by legislation (the Defending People from Overseas Adversary Managed Functions Act of 2024, for those who’re feeling formal) on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, 2025; in reality, there was a short shutdown.

The deadline has been prolonged 4 occasions, through government order, because the Trump administration gained energy on that date. The primary delay took us to April 4, 2025. On that date, one other government order gave ByteDance till June 19, 2025 to promote. Then, guess what: a June 19 government order pushed the deadline again till Dec. 16, 2025.

Within the meantime, we appear to be no nearer to a TikTok sale. By a number of accounts, negotiations have grow to be slowed down, partly as a result of the Chinese language authorities takes a dim view of the U.S. strong-arming one in every of its corporations and views the deal as leverage. To not point out {that a} constantly-extended deadline is not an actual deadline in any respect.

Trump, who has repeatedly drawn consideration to his personal following on TikTok, could seem like he is tactically delaying the ban. However he is additionally eager to take credit score for the opportunity of a sale, and it does not precisely take a world diplomacy professional to see weaknesses on this sport of hardball. You simply must know one in every of 2025’s hottest political truisms: TACO.

Certainly, on Sept. 25, Trump issued one other government order directing the U.S. Lawyer Normal to take “no motion for noncompliance” in opposition to TikTok for “120 days from the date of this order” — which brings us to Jan. 23, 2026. Why? As a result of, Trump wrote, “a plan has been introduced to me to bear a professional divestiture of TikTok’s United States operations.”

That plan was mentioned to contain a $14 billion sale of the U.S. arm of TikTok to a consortium together with Oracle, which is led by Trump backer Larry Ellison. However no additional particulars have materialized, and the Chinese language authorities insists the sale is not going forward — resulting in widespread confusion.

So will TikTok be formally banned within the U.S. on Jan. 23, 2026, 368 days after the unique ban was mentioned to go forward? Your guess is nearly as good as ours — however given the proof of the previous 12 months, it most likely would not be clever to guess your life financial savings on it.