TikTok, don’t stop

Forcing Chinese owner Bytedance into a sale has not been easy as Trump might have expected View in browser Stephen Armstrong and Xavier Greenwood • Friday 20 June 2025 Dear friend, Welcome to today's Sensemaker. Long stories short Donald Trump said he would decide on military action in Iran within two weeks. A Labour whip quit over Keir Starmer's planned welfare cuts. Telegram founder, Pavel Durov, said he fathered more than 100 children. TikTok, don't stop Donald Trump has extended the deadline by which TikTok must be sold by its Chinese owner ByteDance or be shut down in the US.   So what? If this sounds familiar, it's because he's done this three times. Trump once fumed that the app was a national security threat and proposed a ban during his first term. Now he has repeatedly deferred enforcing one. This is the result of the president being between a rock: unwilling to let the app go dark; and a hard place: unable to secure a sale. Rock. Trump reversed his position on TikTok in March 2024, around when he met Jeff Yass, who is a Republican megadonor and major investor in ByteDance. Trump said at the time that he had not discussed the app with Yass. Rock star. The president joined TikTok a few months later, accrued 15 million followers and credited the app with helping him win the election. The TikTok CEO, Shou Zi Chew, attended Trump's inauguration. Hard place. An agreement to spin the US operations of TikTok into a new company owned by American investors was reportedly closed to fruition in April, but collapsed after Trump imposed further tariffs on China. Beijing, which needs to sign off on the deal due to its export rules, walked away. Hard to replace. Another sticking point appears to be TikTok's highly effective algorithm, which rivals have tried to emulate without success. ByteDance has indicated any deal won't include this. One plan, reported by the Washington Post in April, was for the White House to lease it from the firm. Off the table. The US and China have resumed trade discussions now that tariff tensions have chilled, which has raised hopes of a sale. But the treasury secretary Scott Bessent said last week that the fate of TikTok was not part of talks. On the table. There have, however, been no shortage of potential buyers. Names floated in April include Amazon, the tech giant Oracle, and the private equity firm Blackstone. If a deal does not manifest, Trump's possible options include a forced sale to a US company, which could provoke severe retaliation from China; a ban, which will require Apple and Google to remove the TikTok app from their stores and could be circumvented by VPNs; and a long, drawn-out legal battle that results in a stalemate. There is a fourth option: postponing the deadline indefinitely. Kelsey Chickering from Forrester believes TikTok will not be banned as long as Trump is president. But this may not wash. That thing called the law. Legal scholars have questioned Trump's use of executive orders to postpone the ban-or-sale deadline. The law signed by Biden was passed with bipartisan support and upheld by the Supreme Court. It allowed for one 90-day extension, and even then only under certain conditions. That thing called his party. The patience of China hawks is also beginning to run out. The Republican senator Ted Cruz said on Tuesday that Congress had passed the law to stop Beijing using TikTok "to conduct espionage and propaganda". Then again, there have so far been no legal challenges to fight the deferrals. China wants a TACO. Beijing's bet is that Trump will back down on the app as he has with tariffs. The same appears to be true of TikTok, which is hardly on a farewell tour. Last week it rolled out new AI video tools and is actively hiring for thousands of roles across the US. Take it to the people… It is the roughly 170 million US TikTok users who will be most affected if the app does go for good. A recent Pew survey found that about a third of Americans supported a ban, roughly a third were against it, and a third weren't sure. That clears things up. The Observer News Matrix The Nibs Capital Economy, business and finance Play it cool Russia's economy minister said on Thursday that the country is on the brink of recession. This appears to support the oft-repeated claim that Moscow is running on the fumes of its war spending: its rapid growth has been largely concentrated in the defence sector, while most civilian industries are producing less than a year ago. Now that demand has reached capacity, the economy is starting to cool. Help to keep the country's military chest stocked may come from surging oil prices caused by conflict in the Middle East. But even these revenues have been minimised by a strong ruble, which means Russian oil exporters are earning 30 per cent less per barrel than they were at the start of this year. Moscow may have to get creative. Technology AI, science and new things Reduce, reuse, rerocket Honda wants to go to space, and, being civic-minded, wants its rockets to be reusable. Accordingly its research arm, Honda R&D, launched and landed a prototype six-metre rocket from a pad in Taiki on Hokkaido on Tuesday. The company's odyssey to orbit is just beginning: the pilotless flight lasted all of 57 seconds and barely let slip the surly bonds of earth, rising only 300 metres before descending with impressive accuracy to a point 37 centimetres from where it started. The rocket looks not unlike the New Shepard built by Blue Origin and funded by Jeff Bezos – and nothing like the vastly bigger Starship from SpaceX, four of which have blown up so far this year, including one yesterday while still strapped to its launchpad for an engine test in Texas. In private spaceflight, there's still everything to play for. The 100-year life Health, education and government Go figure Let's start with the good news: the US will resume processing visa applications from international students and visiting scholars after halting it for nearly a month. The catch is that the authorities are demanding access to applicants' social media accounts. The state department said this week that people who don't set their profiles to "public" may be rejected, whatever their reasons for doing so. Consular officers have been told to look for "any indications of hostility toward the citizens, culture, government, institutions or founding principles of the United States". This comes weeks after the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said that free speech was "essential to the American way of life" and announced a visa restriction policy on foreigners who are complicit "in censoring Americans". Our planet Climate and geopolitics War and lease The White House said yesterday that Donald Trump would make a decision on taking military action against Iran within two weeks. Keir Starmer has a choice to make too. American B-2 bombers would likely want to take off from the secretive Diego Garcia airbase, which is roughly 3,200 miles from the Fordow nuclear site that Israel wants destroyed. The Indian Ocean base is controlled by Britain on a lease from Mauritius, shared with the US, and was a launchpad for American attacks on Afghanistan after 9/11. B-2s could attack from Missouri, but the need for inflight refuelling would make things more complicated. If Starmer permits Diego Garcia to be used against Iran, UK assets in the Middle East could be threatened in return. Satellite imagery suggests six B-2s were at the base in May, but it's not known how many are there now. Culture Society, identity and belonging Slam dunk For nearly 50 years the Los Angeles Lakers have been synonymous with the Buss family, namely the colourful businessman Dr Jerry Buss and his periodically warring children. But times are changing after a sale that makes the NBA team the most expensive sports franchise in history. The buyer is Mark Walter, minority owner of Chelsea football club, whose purchase of a controlling stake values the Lakers at $10 billion. This will generate a healthy return for the Busses, who spent $67.5 million on the franchise in the late 70s and also got a hockey team and arena thrown in. Walter, meanwhile, is quietly becoming one of the most powerful men in sport. He is controlling owner of the LA Dodgers, the new F1 team Cadillac, the WNBA franchise LA Sparks and North America's women's hockey league. But the Buss clan hasn't quite left the stage: they will keep 15 per cent and one of Jerry's daughters will remain governor. Thanks for reading. Please tell your friends to sign up and tell us what you think. Stephen Armstrong stephen.armstrong@tortoisemedia.com Xavier Greenwood xavier@tortoisemedia.com Additional reporting by Nina Kuryata, Giles Whittell, Serena Cesareo and George Simms.     More from The Observer Listen Brute force: domestic abuse in the ranks The police have an increasingly bad reputation when it comes to dealing with violence against women and girls. Forces in England and Wales say they're trying to fix that, but its track record within its own ranks paints a very different picture. This is the story of three women with one shared experience- being a police officer whose own institution can't help them escape the abuse of their partners.   • Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Follow Follow The Observer on social media on your preferred platform:   The Observer     The Observer Food Monthly The Observer Magazine The Observer New Review   Listen Listen for free in the Tortoise app or wherever you get your podcasts: Want to change how you receive these emails? Update email preferences Copyright © 2025 Tortoise Media. All rights reserved. Did this email get caught in your spam filter? Add editor@newsroom.tortoisemedia.com to your address book to never miss an email again. No longer want to receive this newsletter? Unsubscribe here.