TikTok on Friday was hours from a deadline to find a non-Chinese owner or face a ban in the United States.The hugely popular video-sharing app, which has more than 170 million American users, is under threat from a US law that passed overwhelmingly last year and orders TikTok to split from its Chinese owner ByteDance or get shut down in the United States.US President Donald Trump on Thursday said his administration was “very close” to a deal to find a buyer for TikTok, adding that it involved “multiple” investors but giving no further details.Motivated by national security fears and widespread belief in Washington that TikTok is ultimately controlled by the Chinese government, the law took effect on January 19, one day before Trump’s inauguration.In the hours before that deadline, TikTok temporarily shut down in the United States and disappeared from app stores, to the dismay of millions of users.But the Republican president quickly announced a 75-day delay and TikTok subsequently restored service to existing users, returning to the Apple and Google app stores in February.That delay is set to expire at midnight (0400 GMT) on April 5, but Trump has repeatedly downplayed risks that TikTok is in danger, saying he remains confident of finding a buyer for the app’s US business.The president also suggested TikTok could even be part of a broader deal with China to ease the stinging tariffs he imposed on Beijing as part of a worldwide blitz of levies.Asked Thursday if he was willing to make deals with countries on tariffs, he said: “As long as they are giving us something that is good. For instance with TikTok.””We have a situation with TikTok where China will probably say we’ll approve a deal but will you do something on the tariffs. The tariffs give us great power to negotiate,” he added.According to reports, the most likely solution would see existing US investors in ByteDance roll over their stakes into a new independent global TikTok company.Additional US investors, including Oracle and Blackstone, the private equity firm, would be brought on to reduce the proportion of Chinese investors.Much of TikTok’s US activity is already housed on Oracle servers, and the company’s chairman, Larry Ellison, is a longtime Trump ally.- What about the algorithm? -But uncertainty remains, particularly over what would happen to TikTok’s valuable algorithm. The New York Times suggested the new company could licence it from ByteDance.The arrangement would however go against the spirit of the law, which is in part based on the premise that TikTok’s algorithm can be weaponized by the Chinese against US interests.Amazon has also reportedly made a last-minute bid to buy TikTok.Other proposals include an initiative called “The People’s Bid for TikTok,” launched by real estate and sports tycoon Frank McCourt’s Project Liberty initiative.Artificial intelligence startup Perplexity recently expressed interest in buying TikTok, as did a joint venture involving YouTube mega-celebrity MrBeast.Trump, though he supported a ban in his first term, has lately become a TikTok defender, seeing it as a reason more young voters supported him in November’s election.One of his major political donors, billionaire Jeff Yass, is a major stakeholder in parent company ByteDance.

In unveiling tariffs this week challenging the decades-old international trade order, President Donald Trump lambasted globalization as a raw deal for the United States that has devastated US manufacturing towns.Trump left out the upside to the United States from the liberal flow of goods: a reliable supply of affordably priced appliances, clothing and electronics whose consumption has helped lift US economic growth above other developed economies in recent years.”Obviously we’ve benefited significantly,” said Paul Gruenwald, global chief economist at S&P Global Ratings. “We get to consume a lot of things that are produced more efficiently in other countries.”Trump’s tariffs are almost certain to negatively impact this dynamic, say economists who see the levies lifting the price on everything from Gap t-shirts to the Apple iPhone to French wine.”This is very clearly going to raise consumer prices,” Michael Pearce, a US economist with Oxford Economics, said of the barrage of levies announced late Wednesday in an unveiling the White House billed as “liberation day.”Winners in Trump’s policy include communities that benefit from reshored manufacturing, while losers include export-focused industries like plane manufacturing and pharmaceuticals if there are retaliatory tariffs, Pearce said. But imports represent only about 14 percent of US gross domestic product, while exports account for 11 percent — figures that are even lower if energy is taken out. Moreover, goods account for one-third of US consumption compared with services, which comprise the rest.”The net impact on the US economy may be surprisingly small given the headlines we’re seeing,” said Pearce, who warned that Trump’s levies could end up disproportionately hurting low-income consumers if the tariffs are paired with tax cuts that benefit the wealthy.Gruenwald, who described US consumer resiliency as a core strength in recent times, said S&P will lower the US outlook somewhat amid a higher inflation outlook for 2025. But he said the trade war “wouldn’t move the needle” in the short-term “for a big economy like the United States.”- More ‘friction’ ahead -Trump’s Wednesday White House event unveiled levies on dozens of countries including all major US trading partners. These included the imposition of 20 percent levies on the European Union, 24 percent on Japan and an additional 34 percent on goods from China — bringing the new added tariff rate there to 54 percent. Trump cast the event in historic terms, saying Wednesday “will forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn” and the country turned the page on globalization.”For decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, raped, and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike,” he said.A day after the announcement, commentators cautioned that the president’s history of sometimes quickly shifting on tariffs meant that the proposed levies could be altered after bargaining with other governments, which could lean on big companies to lift investments in the United States. In any case, economists predicted the shift would lessen trade between the United States and other countries, but not end it.”There will be a lot more friction,” said Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM US, a consultancy, who predicted the underlying structure around trade and capital flows will be maintained.Brusuelas said the United States has been the “big winner” under globalization, but predicted growth “won’t be as exceptional.” “Europe and Asia will narrow the gap,” Brusuelas added, calling them “places where the state plays a more central role in constraining the movement of goods and capital.”Pearce said Trump’s unpredictability on trade would lead to reduced capital spending by firms in the short run and that the broad tilt against trade will be “slightly negative” for the US economy in the long run.Gruenwald pointed to the risk of reduced competition.Globalization forced US companies “to deal with foreign competition,” Gruenwald said. “If we kind of seal off that competition, there’s a risk these nice productivity numbers could decline.”