So… is there a TikTok deal or not?

China and the US have “made progress” on granting permission for ByteDance to sell TikTok to an American consortium, fulfilling a nine-months-overdue legal requirement. After saying a tentative deal had been reached Monday and that approval would come Friday, President Donald Trump’s administration has issued an update that leaves the current status ambiguous and the details bare-bones.

“I just completed a very productive call with President Xi of China. We made progress on many very important issues including Trade, Fentanyl, the need to bring the War between Russia and Ukraine to an end, and the approval of the TikTok Deal,” Trump posted on Truth Social, noting he and Xi Jinping would meet at the APEC Summit in Korea in October. “The call was a very good one, we will be speaking again by phone, appreciate the TikTok approval, and both look forward to meeting at APEC!”

“Appreciate the TikTok approval” makes Xi’s benediction sound like a done deal. “We made progress,” however, does not.

TikTok posted an equivocal response on X. “We thank President Xi Jinping and President Donald J. Trump for their efforts to preserve TikTok in the United States,” it said. “ByteDance will work in accordance with applicable laws to ensure TikTok remains available to American users through TikTok U.S.”

This leaves us in effectively the same place as we were earlier this week, when the Trump administration announced a “framework” agreement had been reached; not long after, it extended the January 2025 sale deadline for the fourth time. Reporting on Tuesday indicated that the deal could actually take 30 to 45 more days.

The expected buyers are a consortium that includes Oracle, Andreessen Horowitz, and Susquehanna International Group, with ByteDance reportedly retaining a share just shy of 20 percent, as mandated by a divest-or-ban law Congress passed in 2024. They’re expected to develop a version of the app with a new recommendation algorithm walled off from Chinese control.

TikTok users, meanwhile, are still in the dark about the future of their app — hoping another trade war won’t throw a wrench in the agreement, with no hard timeline for resolution in sight.