The speaker is Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick. On July 24, on one of the shows, he said: “We’ve made the decision. You can’t have Chinese control and have something on 100 million American phones” (“Commerce Sec. Lutnick says TikTok will go dark if China won’t agree to U.S. control of the social media app,” CNBC, July 24, 2025).
Last month, President Donald Trump extended the deadline for a third time since taking office in January. Now, ByteDance has until Sept. 17. to divest TikTok’s U.S. business.
“Basically, Americans will have control. Americans will own the technology. Americans will control the algorithm. That’s something Donald Trump is willing to do,” Lutnick said.
He added that if China doesn’t approve the deal, “then TikTok is going to go dark.”
CNBC has reached out to TikTok for comment.
Mr. Lutnick. The very firm determination, legislated by Congress, accepted by the U.S. Supreme Court, that “you can’t have Chinese control and have something on 100 million American phones” doesn’t jibe with the history of the past six months of extensions of the original deadline by which TikTok was to have been shut down in the United States if ByteDance refused to sell TikTok to a U.S. buyer. (More precisely, if the Chinese Communist Party refused to let ByteDance sell TikTok to a U.S. buyer.)
CNBC needn’t wait for TikTok to get back to it with a comment. I can supply TikTok’s comment: “Yeah, okay. Whatever.”
Also see:
The Federalist: “Why The ‘#StopWillow’ Movement on TikTok May Be a CCP Influence Campaign”
StoptheCCP.org: “TikTok Only Pretends to Hide Data on U.S. Users From ByteDance and China”
Heritage.org: “TikTok Generation: A CCP Official in Every Pocket”
