United States President Donald Trump says he would be willing to reduce tariff rates on China to secure a deal with TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell the social media app used by 170 million Americans.

“With respect to TikTok, and China is going to have to play a role in that, possibly in the form of an approval, maybe, and I think they’ll do that. Maybe I’ll give them a little reduction in tariffs or something to get it done,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday.

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Trump’s proposal came as he announced a 25 percent tariff on imported cars and car parts – his latest salvo in a widening trade war that has stoked tensions with partners and allies.

Earlier this month, Trump increased additional tariffs on all imports from China to 20 percent, up from 10 percent issued in February.

Under US law, ByteDance was required to divest from TikTok by January 19 or risk a ban. However, Trump granted a 75-day grace period, which is set to expire on April 5.

Trump has said he is willing to extend the deadline again if an agreement over the social media app is not reached.

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Former President Joe Biden signed the ban-or-sale law into effect last April. US lawmakers fear that the Chinese government could gain access to vast amounts of personal data through TikTok and use the platform to exert political influence.

TikTok accused of pushing pro-Palestine content

Republican leaders have been pushing for its ban, dubbing it a national security threat even before the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023. Mike Gallagher, a former US congressman and current Palantir executive, introduced a bill in 2023 to ban TikTok.

“So we had a bipartisan consensus,” Gallagher said at the Munich Security Conference last month. “We had the executive branch, but the bill was still dead until October 7th. And people started to see a bunch of anti-Semitic content on the platform and our bill had legs again.”

In the wake of Israel’s devastating war on Gaza, which rights groups have called genocidal, TikTok was accused of pushing pro-Palestinian propaganda. The app was also accused of promoting anti-Israel or anti-Semitic speech on its platform. TikTok has denied the accusations.

“TikTok is a tool China uses to spread propaganda to Americans, now it’s being used to downplay Hamas terrorism,” wrote Senator Marco Rubio on X, formerly known as Twitter, in November 2023.

Experts have pointed out that TikTok’s pro-Palestine tilt appeared to reflect the changing public opinion on the Israel-Palestine conflict in the US.

According to a 2022 Pew Research survey, 61 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 years said they viewed Palestinian people either “very favourably” or “somewhat favourably”, compared with the national average of 52 percent.

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Getting China to agree to give up control of TikTok, worth tens of billions of dollars, has become a major sticking point in US-China economic relations.

On January 20, his first day in office, he warned that he could impose tariffs on China if Beijing failed to approve a US deal with TikTok.

Washington attempting to strong-arm a sale

Vice President JD Vance has said he expects the general terms of an agreement that resolves the ownership of the social media platform to be reached by April 5.

The future of the app used by nearly half of all Americans has been up in the air since a law, passed last year with overwhelming bipartisan support, required ByteDance to divest TikTok by January 19.

The app briefly went dark in January after the US Supreme Court upheld the ban, but flickered back to life days later once Trump took office.

Trump quickly issued an executive order postponing enforcement of the law to April 5 and said last month that he could further extend that deadline to give himself time to shepherd a deal.