Bytedance, the parent company of TikTok, was granted another 7-day extension from the U.S. Treasury on Wednesday afternoon to divest from its American assets.
TikTok was given a two-week extension earlier this month to have its divestment plan approved by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), but that was set to expire on Friday.
“The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) has granted ByteDance a one-week extension, from November 27, 2020 to December 4, 2020 to allow time to review a revised submission that the Committee recently received,” a Treasury spokesperson told TheWrap.
President Trump signed an executive order in August banning TikTok unless it offloaded its U.S. operations, citing national security concerns tied to the app’s data collection and close ties to China’s communist government.
In September, TikTok reached a deal for Oracle to become its “trusted technology provider” in the U.S. Walmart, as part of the deal, would also receive a minority stake in TikTok Global, a new American offshoot of the company. President Trump gave his informal “blessing” on the Oracle-TikTok deal soon after it was announced, but the bid has been stuck in regulatory limbo for two months ever since. One sticking point seemed to be federal regulators wanting ByteDance to offload a bigger share of its American business than the 20% initially outlined in Oracle’s bid.
Leading up to its initial November 12 deadline, it was unclear what, if any, ramifications there would be for ByteDance not divesting in time. The president’s executive order did not outline penalties for TikTok or ByteDance if an agreement wasn’t reached by November 12, but it did grant Attorney General William Barr the authority to “take any steps necessary” to enforce divestiture.
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