Amazon ‘makes last-minute bid for TikTok’

Amazon has put in a bid to purchase TikTok, a Trump administration official said, in an eleventh-hour pitch as a US ban on the platform is set to go into effect on Saturday.

The official said the Amazon offer was made in a letter to vice president JD Vance and commerce secretary Howard Lutnick.

The New York Times first reported on the bid.

President Donald Trump on Inauguration Day gave the platform a reprieve, barrelling past a law that had been upheld unanimously by the Supreme Court, which said the ban was necessary for national security.

Under the law, TikTok’s Chinese-owned parent company ByteDance is required to sell the platform to an approved buyer or take it offline in the United States.

Mr Trump has suggested he could further extend the pause on the ban, but he has also said he expects a deal to be forged by Saturday.

Amazon declined to comment.

The existence of an Amazon bid surfaced as Mr Trump was scheduled on Wednesday to meet with senior officials to discuss the coming deadline for a TikTok sale.

Both the FBI and the Federal Communications Commission have warned that ByteDance could share user data – such as browsing history, location and biometric identifiers – with China’s authoritarian government.

TikTok said it has never done that and would not do so if asked.

The US government has not provided evidence of that happening.

Mr Trump has millions of followers on TikTok and has credited the trendsetting platform with helping him gain traction among young voters.

During his first term, he took a more sceptical view of TikTok and issued executive orders banning dealings with ByteDance as well as the owners of the Chinese messaging app WeChat.