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President Donald Trump said the Chinese tariffs could depend on a deal to own TikTok, as he signed an executive order to keep the popular short-form video platform online in the US. 75 days.

Within hours of him inauguration on MondayTrump postponed a deadline that required TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell its stake in the app or face a ban from the country.

Trump said the US “should be entitled to half of the TikTok” if the app continues to operate beyond that cut-off and that he will “definitely” impose tariffs on China if it rejects a deal, which he says is a “hostile act”.

He said the tariffs could be as high as 100 percent. “In the end (Beijing) approved it because we put tariffs on China,” Trump said to sign the order. “I’m not saying I will, but you can.”

China is one of three countries Trump has threatened to hit with tariffs on his first day in office. On Monday, he said he was may impose a tax of 25 percent in Canada and Mexico from February 1.

But he did not implement sweeping 60 percent tariffs on Chinese imports as he promised during the campaign, marking a new phase in the trade war with Beijing during his first term.

The move to impose tariffs against China appears to offer a bargaining chip for a deal with TikTok. Trump spoke to Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Friday and said he had raised the issue with TikTok, although Beijing did not confirm the discussion.

TikTok became temporarily unavailable for about 170 million US users at midnight on Sunday after an initial deadline under the “divest or ban” law, but it returned to service later.

The executive order states that companies that distribute and host TikTok – which include Apple and Google as well as cloud provider Oracle – will not be liable for violating the law during a 75-day period. extension. Under the law, service providers risk a fine of $5,000 per user.

But Tom Cotton, the Republican head of the Senate intelligence committee, warned the companies on Sunday that they risked “devastating bankruptcy” by violating the law.

TikTok chief executive Shou Zi Chew went on the offensive after Trump told his campaign that he hoped to “save” the app.

Chew attended the inauguration with tech billionaires Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg and sat next to Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, which drew criticism from some observers.

Many US politicians and security officials believe that the Chinese government could use TikTok to access the personal information of Americans, which would facilitate espionage, and use the app’s algorithm to spread propaganda. TikTok denies that Beijing has control over the app.

TikTok has also said that the divestment cannot be done within the legal time frame. Beijing has indicated it is opposed to a sale.

However, Trump suggested that if the app continues to operate, the US should be paid “half the value of TikTok”, adding: “If I don’t do the deal there’s no value. If I do the deal, it could be worth a trillion dollars.”

Last week, the Reported by the Financial Times that Chinese officials have discussed using Musk, a close confidant of Trump, as a broker in a potential sale of TikTok’s US operations. Musk on Monday met with Chinese vice-president Han Zheng, who attended Trump’s inauguration.

He too called The presence of TikTok in the US – while western platforms such as its social media site X is banned in China – as “unbalanced”, adding “something that needs to change”.

Beijing did not immediately respond to Trump’s statements threatening tariffs if it does not agree to a deal with TikTok.

On Monday, China’s foreign ministry said any decision about TikTok’s ownership should be made “according to market principles and determined by the companies themselves”.

Additional reporting by Aime Williams in Washington