Potential TikTok buyers are lining up as President Trump and the Chinese government show heightened interest in striking a deal to sell the popular video-sharing platform in the face of a U.S.

President Donald Trump said Tuesday he is open to Elon Musk buying TikTok, and floated a proposal that the United States jointly own half the company. “I would be, if he wanted to buy it, yes,” Trump told reporters at a White House event announcing a new AI infrastructure private sector partnership with tech leaders,

"I have been against a TikTok ban for a long time, because it goes against freedom of speech. That said, the current situation where TikTok is allowed to operate in America, but X

TikTok could still not be downloaded from the Apple and Google app stores in the U.S, even after President Trump's executive order.

Within hours of his inauguration, President Donald Trump issued an executive order suspending the enforcement of a TikTok ban that had taken effect the previous day. The move tossed a lifeline to TikTok -- and its 170 million users in the United States.

Legal experts said despite Trump's order, service providers and app distributors such as Google and Apple still face major uncertainty and potential massive financial liability for defying a law that banned TikTok in the United States unless Chinese parent ByteDance divested the company by Jan.

Many people are listing iPhones with TikTok installed on eBay for thousands of dollars as the app remains absent on Google and Apple app stores.