President Trump plans to meet with top White House officials on Wednesday to discuss a proposal that could secure TikTok’s future in the United States, two people familiar with the plans said.

Mr. Trump will consider a proposal for a new ownership structure for the popular video app, which is owned by the Chinese internet giant ByteDance. Lawmakers and other U.S. officials have argued that the app’s ties to China raise national security concerns, and a federal law that was passed last year requires TikTok to change its ownership or face a ban in the United States. The latest deadline for that ban is Saturday.

The meeting is set to include Vice President JD Vance, whom Mr. Trump tapped to find an arrangement to save the popular app early in February, and other top officials, the two people said on the condition of anonymity. The new ownership structure, they said, could include Blackstone, the private equity giant, and Oracle, the technology company.

The meeting is another twist in the long national saga of TikTok, which surged in popularity in the United States despite sustained and deep scrutiny in Washington and state capitals. Mr. Trump, who made repeated assurances that he wants to save the app, extended the deadline for a deal in January and suggested that he might do so again if a suitable plan was not reached by early this month.

TikTok did not immediately return a request for comment.

It is not clear that the kind of deal under discussion would comply with the law, which calls for no more than 20 percent of TikTok or its parent company to be owned by people or companies in so-called foreign adversary countries, a list that includes China.

The law also bars a new entity from working with ByteDance to operate its video-recommendation technology or creating a data-sharing agreement.

Mr. Trump suggested last week that he might relax upcoming tariffs on China in exchange for the country’s support of a deal.

TikTok has maintained that it is not for sale, in part, it says, because the Chinese government would block a deal.

President Trump has settled on a final plan for sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs, which are expected to take effect on Wednesday after he announces the details at an afternoon Rose Garden ceremony.

The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, confirmed the timeline in a briefing with reporters on Tuesday, adding that Mr. Trump had been huddling with his trade team to hash out the finer points of an approach meant to end “decades of unfair trade practices.”

When pressed on whether the administration was worried the tariffs could prove to be the wrong approach, Ms. Leavitt struck a confident note: “They’re not going to be wrong,” she said. “It is going to work.”

The administration has been weighing several different tariff strategies in recent weeks. One option examined by the White House is a 20 percent flat tariff on all imports, which advisers have said could help raise more than $6 trillion in revenue for the U.S. government.

But advisers have also discussed the idea of assigning different tariff levels to countries depending on the trade barriers those countries impose against American products. They have also said that some nations might avoid tariffs entirely by striking trade deals with the United States.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Monday, Mr. Trump said the United States would be “very nice, relatively speaking,” in imposing tariffs on a vast number of countries — including U.S. allies — that he believes are unfairly inhibiting the flow of American exports.

“That word reciprocal is very important,” Mr. Trump told reporters. “What they do to us, we do to them.”

By Tuesday, Ms. Leavitt said the president had made a decision and was with his trade team now “perfecting it.” When asked if companies could do anything to avoid the tariffs, Ms. Leavitt said the president was “always up to take a phone call” from companies but was “very much focused on fixing the wrongs of the past.”

She also said that many foreign governments had called the president and his team about the tariffs, but that Mr. Trump was focused on the interests of the United States.

“The president has a brilliant team of advisers who have been studying these issues for decades, and we are focused on restoring the golden age of America and making America a manufacturing superpower,” she said.

The prospect of tariffs has left markets uneasy. Stocks edged down at the start of trading, with the S&P 500 opening about 0.4 percent lower before rebounding after a choppy day yesterday that ended with the index registering its worst month and quarter since 2022.

Investors are still seeking clarity on the scope of Mr. Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, and the economic uncertainty surrounding a global trade war has fueled stock market volatility in recent weeks.

It has similarly troubled the manufacturing industry, which showed signs of contraction in March, according to new data released Tuesday from the Institute for Supply Management, which is closely tracked by the White House. The report found declines in employment and new orders, as firms raised alarms about the nature of Mr. Trump’s tariffs and the prospect for costly global retaliation.

The president is set to receive reports from his advisers on nearly two dozen trade-related topics on Tuesday, advising him on how he might proceed on addressing a range of issues.

The reports, which are due from the Commerce and Treasury departments as well as the United States Trade Representative, will look at the causes of persistent trade deficits, unfair trade practices by other countries, gaps in existing trade agreements and recommendations for achieving reciprocity in trade relationships, among other issues.

The trade representative, for example, was responsible for identifying countries with which the United States should negotiate new trade agreements, and whether China has upheld its commitments under a 2020 trade deal that Mr. Trump signed in his first term.

In several cases, Mr. Trump has acted before even seeing the details of the reports. Although he asked for reviews into whether foreign metals posed a risk to national security, Mr. Trump has already imposed 25 percent tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. He also hit Canada, Mexico and China with tariffs intended to stem the flow of fentanyl and migrants into the United States, which is another area that his administration was studying.

How Mr. Trump plans to proceed on Wednesday remains an open question — one that has left America’s trading partners struggling to determine a response.

While the European Union has already announced that it will respond to steel and aluminum tariffs with countermeasures, officials are still contemplating how to respond to the measures that Mr. Trump has yet to unveil.

Although the European response so far has concentrated on imposing higher tariffs on a wide variety of goods — whiskey, motorcycles and women’s clothing are among the products that could be affected — officials are also open to placing trade barriers on services, using a new trade weapon that was developed only in 2021.

That tool could be used to hit big tech firms, said two diplomats familiar with the matter but who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. That means that instead of affecting physical goods, it could have an impact on companies like Google, Meta, or even American banks.

The goal would be to give the European Union more leverage, since Europe buys more services from the United States than it exports — making its market, and access to European consumers, a potentially powerful tool. But no decisions have been made.

“Europe holds a lot of cards,” Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said during a speech on Tuesday. “From trade to technology to the size of our market.”

Officials are emphasizing that their goal is still to negotiate, though they will respond firmly if needed.

“All instruments are on the table,” Ms. von der Leyen said.

Danielle Kaye contributed reporting.

A federal bankruptcy judge in Houston on Monday rejected Johnson & Johnson’s request to approve a $9 billion settlement with tens of thousands of people who are suing the company over claims that its talcum powder products caused cancer.

The proposal would have resolved nearly all current and future claims that the company’s talc products contained asbestos and caused cancer. Like the previous two efforts — in 2021 and 2023 — the deal tried to use an element of the bankruptcy system to settle the claims.

Johnson & Johnson claims that its products did not contain asbestos and that there was no proven link between its products and the cancer, the judge, Christopher Lopez, wrote in his ruling. Johnson & Johnson has long denied those claims, but has in recent years stopped selling talc-based baby powder worldwide.

Over 90,000 claims against Johnson & Johnson and other parties are pending, far too many for the courts to process individually.

The settlement attempt by the company and lawyers for the plaintiffs who brought the claims was opposed by a Department of Justice bankruptcy trustee as well as other plaintiffs’ lawyers, the judge said.

In a statement on Monday, Johnson & Johnson said, “The court has unfortunately allowed a couple of law firms with financially conflicted motives, who have conceded they have not recovered a dime for their clients in a decade of litigation, to defeat the overwhelming desire of claimants.”

“Rather than pursue a protracted appeal,” the company said, it “will return to the tort system to litigate and defeat these meritless talc claims.” It added that it would reverse about $7 billion that it had set aside to resolve the bankruptcy.

Johnson & Johnson, which makes pharmaceuticals and consumer products including Band-Aids and Listerine, spent years arguing that its baby powder was safe. Internal memos showed that inside of the company, there were worries that the talc could be contaminated with asbestos, a known carcinogen.

Since 2021, critics have contended that Johnson & Johnson has been trying to take unfair advantage of protections afforded companies in bankruptcy court. That year, it created a subsidiary, LTL Management, and shunted the baby powder claims into it. A day later, LTL declared bankruptcy.

Johnson & Johnson announced at the time that the bankruptcy filing, in New Jersey, was intended to resolve the lawsuits “in a manner that is equitable to all parties.” It said the company would provide funds for any amounts that a bankruptcy court decided that LTL owed.

Plaintiffs’ lawyers derided the creation of LTL and its nearly instant bankruptcy as an example of “the Texas two-step” — an effort to shield a solvent company with an insolvent one. In January 2023, a federal judge rejected LTL’s bankruptcy filing.

Three months later, the company announced that it had reached a deal to pay $8.9 billion over 25 years to tens of thousands of claimants, an attempt to end litigation that by then had gone on for more than a decade. Plaintiffs’ lawyers in the case called the settlement a “significant victory for the tens of thousands of women suffering from gynecological cancers caused by J.&J.’s talc-based products.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit twice rejected the settlement. Johnson & Johnson tried again, this time in Texas, and Judge Lopez has now rejected it, too. He decided that the plaintiffs’ lawyers had not adequately secured the consent of enough claimants. He also found “solicitation irregularities, including the unreasonably short voting time for thousands of creditors,” he wrote.

“While the court’s decision is not an easy one,” he stated, “it is the right one.”