The Trump administration signaled last week that it hopes to hammer out a deal on TikTok by April 5, when the app could again shut down after getting temporary reprieve from a ban earlier this year. And on Sunday, Politico reported that the White House is considering an arrangement where Oracle would run TikTok US to head off concerns over the app’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance.

But to “save TikTok,” as US President Donald Trump promised to do on the 2024 campaign trail, his administration will need to satisfy the divestiture requirements set out in the bipartisan law overwhelmingly passed by Congress and signed by former President Joe Biden last year.

The ban — which came into force on Jan. 19 and remains in effect — prohibits app stores and internet-hosting services from distributing TikTok unless the president “determines” that its parent company has executed a “qualified divestiture” of the app. (In January, Trump ordered his administration not to enforce the law for 75 days, teeing up the April 5 deadline.)

While the law gives the president some discretion over whether an adequate deal has been executed, it also lays out specific benchmarks that may decide the fate of any TikTok agreement. Here are the four major requirements Trump will need to contend with under the law:

1. A Twenty-Percent Ownership Stake Cutoff

The measure ultimately leaves it up to the president to decide if a TikTok transaction or sale would result in it “no longer being controlled by a foreign adversary.”

The law, however, states that an app is considered to be under such control if people or entities living or headquartered in a foreign adversary country — such as China, Russia, or Iran — “directly or indirectly own at least a 20 percent stake” in it. (ByteDance has headquarters in Beijing.)

That language makes it unlikely that one arrangement Trump has floated — that the US and ByteDance could split ownership of TikTok evenly in a “joint venture” — would withstand legal scrutiny. Still, it could allow ByteDance or its affiliates to keep an ownership stake in the app.

TikTok has said that only 20 percent of ByteDance is currently owned by its Chinese founders, with another 20 percent owned by its employees and 60 owned by global investors.

2. No ‘Direction Or Control’ Over TikTok

While ByteDance and its affiliates could potentially maintain a stake in TikTok under a new deal, the law also stipulates that an app will be considered to be under foreign adversary control if it is “subject to the direction or control” of a person or entity living or headquartered in a rival country.

Those requirements are described in the section of the law that defines what constitutes an app that is “controlled by a foreign adversary.”

The law does not expressly define what the “direction or control” of the app would look like, but the language could preclude ByteDance or any of its associated entities or leaders from having decision-making power over TikTok’s US business. (Politico reported Sunday that “significant concerns remain about what role the app’s Chinese founders will play in its ongoing US operation.”)

3. and 4. No ‘Operational Relationship’ With TikTok’s Algorithm Or Data

As it tries to make a deal, the Trump Administration must address two additional requirements outlined in the law’s definition of a “qualified divestiture.”

Notably, the law states that either a “divestiture” or a “similar transaction” could qualify, suggesting that full separation between ByteDance and TikTok may not be necessary to comply.

What the law does require, though, is a determination from the president that ByteDance has executed a deal that “precludes” any “operational relationship” between itself and TikTok with regards to “a content recommendation algorithm” or “with respect to data sharing.”

Those two pieces — the focal point of US national security concerns — effectively require ByteDance to disentangle itself from how TikTok recommends American users content or how it stores or shares their data. (TikTok and federal officials across several different administrations worked for years to broker a deal to allay those concerns, to little avail.)

Will Trump Follow The Letter Of The Law?

It’s unclear how closely the Trump administration will hew to these restrictions or who might challenge any deal the president strikes if it veers away from the law’s intent.

Trump has already demonstrated he is willing to disregard the TikTok law by ordering his administration not to enforce it for 75 days. Notably, he did so by issuing an executive order rather than invoking a provision allowing him to extend the divestiture deadline by up to 90 days. (That wrinkle required that the president certify that there was progress toward a TikTok deal. Biden administration officials signaled that ByteDance had made no such progress just days prior to Trump’s order.)

It’s also possible that the exact terms of the deal may not be ironed out by April 5, which could create more confusion for app stores and internet hosting services on whether they can make the app available to US users.

Vice President JD Vance, whom Trump tapped to lead the TikTok negotiations, told NBC News that he expects a “high-level agreement” to be in place by then. Under the law, the president can extend the divestiture deadline if there are “binding legal agreements” in place toward a deal, though it is unclear whether Trump can invoke the extension after the law has taken effect. The Biden administration declined to take a position on that point when it defended the law in court last year.

US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Fox Business on Friday that Trump “wants to do [a TikTok deal] in the time frame that he was given” and that he “doesn’t like to ask for extensions.”