The delay was inevitable given Trump’s promise that a deal is nearly finalised for the ByteDance-owned platform’s US assets. If this was a video, it would be stuck on a loop, as US president Donald Trump delays for the fourth time a US ban on social media platform TikTok. In an executive order released yesterday (16 September), Trump has set a new deadline of 16 December for TikTok parent company ByteDance to sell at least part of its US TikTok platform to a US-owned company. On 20 January, Trump signed an order delaying the ban for 75 days. Speaking in Madrid on 15 September, US treasury secretary Scott Bessent said that the “commercial terms [of the TikTok deal] have been agreed upon”.