TikTok ban was due Dec. 16. There’s a new deadline.

If you’re a US-based TikTok user who was anxiously counting down the days until the social media app is banned on December 16, 2025, there’s good news. Christmas came early – you might want to start counting down the days until January 23rd instead.

December 16 was, theoretically, the latest deadline for TikTok, owned by Chinese tech firm ByteDance, to complete the sale of its US business. This was supposed to happen by law (Protecting Americans from Foreign Enemy Controlled Applications of 2024, if you’re feeling formal) on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2025; In fact, there was a brief shutdown.

Since the Trump administration assumed power on that date, the deadline has been extended four times via executive order. The first delay took us to April 4, 2025. On that date, another executive order gave ByteDance until June 19, 2025 to sell. Then, guess what: A June 19 executive order pushed back the deadline to December 16, 2025.

Meanwhile, it looks like we’re no closer to a TikTok sale. According to multiple accounts, negotiations have stalled because the Chinese government is indifferent to the US giving strong weapons to one of its companies and sees the deal as a benefit. Needless to say, the continuously extended deadline is not an actual deadline.

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Trump, who has repeatedly drawn attention to his followers on TikTok, may appear to be cleverly delaying the ban. But he’s also eager to take credit for the potential sale, and it doesn’t take an international diplomacy expert to see the weaknesses in this game of hardball. All you need to know is one of the hottest political truths of 2025: TACO.

Indeed, on September 25, Trump issued another executive order directing the U.S. Attorney General to “take no action for noncompliance” against TikTok “for 120 days from the date of this order” — which brings us to January 23, 2026. Why? Because, Trump wrote, “A plan has been presented to me to undergo a qualified divestiture of TikTok’s United States operations.”

That plan was said to include a $14 billion sale of TikTok’s US arm to a consortium including Oracle, which is led by Trump supporter Larry Ellison. But no further details have been revealed, and the Chinese government says the sale is not going ahead – leading to widespread confusion.

So will TikTok be officially banned in the US on January 23, 2026, 368 days after the original ban went ahead? Your guess is as good as ours – but given the evidence of the past year, it probably wouldn’t be wise to bet your life savings on it.