Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has warned that TikTok will be shut off for U.S. users unless China grants Washington greater control over the platform.
“We’ve made the decision. You can’t have Chinese control and have something on 100 million American phones,” Lutnick told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on July 24.
TikTok’s future in the United States has been uncertain since Congress passed a bill last year that would ban the app in the country unless its Chinese owner, ByteDance, divested from it.
President Donald Trump recently extended the deadline for Chinese divestiture for a third time, giving ByteDance until Sept. 17 to act—or face a shutdown.
Trump’s latest deadline extension came as ByteDance, which has links to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), was nearing a June 19 deadline to sell its video-sharing platform under a national security law that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld earlier this year. In May, Trump said he would extend the June deadline, noting that TikTok helped him reach younger audiences during the 2024 presidential campaign.
Members of Congress who supported the law mandating that ByteDance divest itself of its ownership of TikTok have cited national security concerns due to the company’s ties to the CCP.
