With President Donald Trump reportedly seeking to sell popular, Chinese-owned, short video app TikTok. In order to do so, he’s even considering raising the yuan by lowering tariffs on Chinese imports. In a gaggle with reporters on Wednesday, Trump professed disbelief. Specifically, he proposed to roll back the levies that were raised from 10% to 20% at the polls on March 4. This action is included in the ongoing push to finalize TikTok’s sale. ByteDance, the app’s owner, has expressed urgency to finalize the deal before the approaching April 5 deadline.
The higher tariffs, which made an across-the-board jump to all imports from China, went into effect just two weeks ago. After all, Trump has used tariffs in the past as a stick to beat China with and obtain leverage in trade negotiations. On his first day back in the White House, January 20, he made a serious threat. He pledged to raise new import taxes if China didn’t approve a TikTok divestment deal.
"Maybe I'll give them a little reduction in tariffs or something to get it done," Donald Trump stated.
In retaliation, China has placed their own tariffs on several US farm products. Currently, as of February 10, these taxes are between 10% and 15%. This is why we see Beijing actively poaching US companies in aviation, defense, and technology sectors. They’ve added these firms to an “unreliable entity list” and have imposed tough export controls.
Despite these tensions Trump is still confident they can hit at least an outline of a deal by April 5th. The legislation, enacted in 2024 under national security grounds, mandates the sale or potential ban of TikTok in the United States. With approximately 170 million American users, the stakes are high for ByteDance to secure Beijing's approval—a significant challenge given China's call for the US to resume dialogue with Beijing.
"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," Trump remarked.
The BBC has contacted TikTok and the Chinese embassy in Washington for their respective comments. Trump’s administration had earlier postponed enforcement of a law that would ban TikTok in January. The possible sale of TikTok has been estimated in the tens of billions of dollars. Getting Beijing to agree continues to be a key hurdle.