It was recently reported that Microsoft is in line to purchase the US operations of TikTok after the app came under the government’s scanner due to privacy concerns. Now, as per a Bloomberg report, US President Donald Trump has given TikTok’s parent company – ByteDance – a September 15 deadline to either sell TikTok’s US operations to a US-based company or risk getting shut down in the US.

“I don’t mind whether it’s Microsoft or someone else, a big company, a secure company, a very American company buys it. It’ll close down on Sept. 15 unless Microsoft or somebody else is able to buy it and work out a deal, an appropriate deal, so the Treasury of the United States gets a lot of money,” Trump reportedly told reporters in the White House.

Trump mentioned that he’ll pass an executive order to ban TikTok in the US if the deal doesn’t go through, a decision that has drawn sharp criticism from China. Microsoft, on the other hand, has been in talks in with Trump regarding the deal as well as ByteDance to take over operations of TikTok in the US.