Will Tiktok be forbidden on Saturday? This is what will probably happen.

Tiktok could be prohibited in the United States in the coming days. Or he could stay.

Maybe he will have new owners. Maybe this is not the case.

Yes, you have already heard all this before: in January, the extremely popular video application was to become dark in the United States – and in fact, was offline for a few hours – due to a law forcing Chinese society to close or find new owners for its American operations.

Then Donald Trump signed an executive decree posting the date of the ban until April 5 – it’s Saturday. So here we are.

In the latest version of the story, the most likely result is a matter where a coalition of American investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Blackstone and Silver Lake, bought a 50% stake in Tiktok American operations; In this proposal, some of the investors existing in Bytedance, the current owner of Tiktok, also keep a stake. We have also heard of a wave of last -minute offers from Amazon and other players. Vice-president JD Vance says that there will be a kind of agreement announced before the deadline.

A tiktok sale needs a big sign

The problem with one of these potential solutions: it is not entirely clear if Bytedance would agree to yield its American operations and / or if the Chinese government would allow it. Without these panels, regardless of the type of transaction structure that Trump and American investors would like.

Trump previously said that he could convince Chinese officials to have an agreement by reducing the prices on China. But Thursday, we do not know if these negotiations occur; Dan Primack, finance journalist Axios of course, says that his sources say “they have still not heard of direct discussions between the United States and Chinese governments on a particular proposal”. I asked Tiktok and the White House to comment.

It is therefore quite possible that on Saturday, there is still no real deal – as opposed to a proposal – in place to transfer the majority ownership of US Tiktok operations to non -Chinese owners, who was observing the law adopted by the Congress, signed by Joe Biden and confirmed by the Supreme Court.

What if so, what’s going on on Saturday?

My intuition: nothing.

Or, to be more precise: Trump announces that the proposal he announced East An agreement, whatever the facts. And Tiktok continues to work as usual, and the box continues to be kicked the road.

After all, we have already seen Trump ignore a tiktok delay in the past.

In January, even before he was president, Trump told various technological companies to ignore the Tiktok law which entered into force on January 19. And his executive decree specifically asks the American prosecutor general not to apply the law “even after the expiration” of the 75 -day extension that Trump granted himself.

And just to continue repeating this: while the existing Tiktok law do Allowing the president to grant a single extension and 90 days before Tiktok was prohibited, it is only supposed to occur if There is a real plan to decide, and there is “evidence of significant progress” towards the realization of this, and there are “relevant binding agreements”.

But obviously, none of this was happening on January 20, when Trump signed his executive decree pushing the ban. And that does not seem to happen yet this time.

We are in Trump’s world now

In a normal and pre-trump world, you expect someone-perhaps a Tiktok rival like Meta, perhaps a member of the Congress who signed the Tiktok Sell Ban bill last year-to raise serious objections to the fact that the Trump administration seems to ignore a law. Maybe someone may even have challenged the White House in court.

But in the world in which we live today, it seems that Tiktok will be in the United States for a while to come. It doesn’t matter who owns it.