Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for freeYour guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the worldPresident Donald Trump has said that tariffs on China could hinge on a deal over TikTok’s ownership, as he signed an executive order to keep the popular short-form video platform online in the US for 75 days. Within hours of his inauguration on Monday, Trump postponed a deadline requiring TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell its stake in the app or face a ban in the country. Trump argued that the US “should be entitled to get half of TikTok” if the app continued operating beyond that cut-off and that he could “certainly” impose tariffs on China if it rejected a deal, which he said would be a “hostile act”. Trump added that the tariffs could be as high as 100 per cent. “I think ultimately [Beijing] would approve it because we’d put tariffs on China,” Trump said on signing the order in the Oval Office. “I’m not saying I would, but you certainly could do that.”The 75-day reprieve to the “divest-or-ban” law is designed “to permit [Trump’s] Administration an opportunity to determine the appropriate course of action with respect to TikTok”, the executive order read.It also stated that companies that distribute and host TikTok — which include the Apple and Google app stores as well as cloud provider Oracle — would not be held liable for violating the law in the interim. Under the law, service providers risked fines of $5,000 per user.TikTok became temporarily unavailable for about 170mn US users when the ban came into effect at midnight on Sunday, after the law was upheld by the Supreme Court on Friday. But it resumed service hours later, with the company saying Trump had given adequate assurances that the service providers would not face penalties. TikTok chief executive Shou Zi Chew had gone on a charm offensive after Trump had indicated during his campaign that he hoped to “save” the app. Chew on Monday attended the inauguration alongside tech billionaires Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, after lavishing Trump with public praise over the weekend. Some US politicians and security officials believe the Chinese government could use TikTok to access Americans’ personal information, which could facilitate espionage, and wield the app’s algorithm to spread propaganda. TikTok denies that Beijing has any control over the app.TikTok has previously said that divestment was technologically unfeasible within the timeframe of the law. Beijing has indicated that it opposed a sale. Nevertheless, Trump suggested that if the app continued to operate in the US after the extended deadline, the country should be paid “half of the value of TikTok”, adding: “If I don’t do the deal it’s worthless. If I do the deal it’s worth maybe a trillion dollars.”Last week, the Financial Times reported that Chinese officials were discussing using Musk, a close confidant of Trump, as a broker in a potential sale of TikTok’s US operations. Musk on Sunday complained of an “unbalanced” situation between TikTok’s continued presence in the US and the lack of access for his social media site X in China, where western tech platforms are generally banned. “Something needs to change,” he said.The Tesla chief rarely comments on issues sensitive to Beijing, given his extensive business interests in China, an important market and production centre for his electric vehicle company. Beijing did not immediately respond to Trump’s remarks threatening tariffs if it did not agree to a TikTok deal.On Monday, China’s foreign ministry had said that any decision regarding TikTok’s ownership should be taken “according to market principles and be determined by the companies themselves”. Additional reporting by Aime Williams in Washington
