Vice President JD Vance expressed optimism TikTok will meet an early April deadline requiring it to find a U.S. buyer or face a ban in the country.
TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a China-based company, giving rise to concerns that Beijing could use the popular app to steal millions of Americans’ data and pose a national security threat to the United States. If the social media platform is not sold to an American buyer by April 5, TikTok will face a full ban in the U.S. due to legislation passed by Congress.
However, Vance insisted that “there will almost certainly be a high-level agreement that I think satisfies our national security concerns, allows there to be a distinct American TikTok enterprise” during comments to NBC News on Friday.
“We’re trying to close this thing by early April,” the vice president told reporters aboard Air Force Two before adding that clerical issues and technical legalities have been stalling faster progress. “I think that the outlines of this thing will be very clear. The question is whether we can get all the paper done.”
There are four different groups looking at acquiring TikTok, according to comments President Donald Trump made earlier this week. The president did not identify the entities.
TikTok was initially set to be banned in January. However, Trump signed an executive order that month giving the social media platform until April to fund a U.S. buyer.
Trump said earlier this month he would “probably” grant TikTok another extension if it fails to meet the April 5 deadline.
TRUMP WILL ‘PROBABLY’ EXTEND TIKTOK SALE DEADLINE IF AGREEMENT NOT REACHED
Vance said Friday that the administration would prefer to get a deal done without another extension but added that creating “thousands of legal documents” to seal the buyout was a painstakingly long process.
“I think the question is, what is the equity ownership of the new joint venture? How do you do the contracts for all the investors, the customers, the service providers? … The deal itself will be very clear, but actually creating those thousands and thousands of pages of legal documents, that’s the one thing that I worry could slip,” he said.
