中文
English
As he promised Sunday, President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive action that delays enforcement of the TikTok ban for 75 days.
The action directs the US Justice Department not to enforce the Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which passed with broad bipartisan support in Congress and was signed in April by former President Joe Biden. The law required that starting January 19, TikTok be banned in the United States unless it sells to a buyer from America or one of its allies.
The law gives the president broad discretion on how to enforce the ban. Trump’s promise in a Truth Social post that he would sign an executive action Monday so that the law will not be enforced – including for ban violations that took place before he became president – was sufficient enough for TikTok, which shut itself down for about 14 hours Saturday night into Sunday, to go back online Sunday afternoon.
“The unfortunate timing of section 2(a) of the Act — one day before I took office as the 47th President of the United States — interferes with my ability to assess the national security and foreign policy implications of the Act’s prohibitions before they take effect,” Trump’s executive action said. “This timing also interferes with my ability to negotiate a resolution to avoid an abrupt shutdown of the TikTok platform while addressing national security concerns.”
The action says the 75 day delay will help the Trump administration attempt to “determine the appropriate course forward in an orderly way that protects national security while avoiding an abrupt shutdown of a communications platform used by millions of Americans.”
Trump told reporters Monday that he changed his mind on TikTok because he “got to use it.”
“And remember, TikTok is largely about kids, young kids,” Trump said in the Oval Office when asked what changed his mind. “If China is going to get information about young kids out of it, to be honest, I think we have bigger problems than that.”
He also told reporters the action that he signed on TikTok gave him the right to either “sell it or close it.”
“I have the right to either sell it or close it, and we’ll make that determination,” Trump added.
But TikTok’s ultimate fate in America remains in doubt. It’s unclear that TikTok’s China-based owner, ByteDance, would want to sell to a buyer, even if it were a deal brokered by Trump.
TikTok is back – for now
TikTok restored access for American users midday on Sunday, crediting Trump for bringing the app back.
“I will issue an executive order on Monday to extend the period of time before the law’s prohibitions take effect, so that we can make a deal to protect our national security,” Trump said in a Truth Social post Sunday. He added that he would not hold TikTok’s technology partners — including Apple, Google and cloud computing company Oracle — liable for continuing to make the app available until he signed the order.
It was that reassurance that he wouldn’t fine its tech partners, TikTok said, that allowed it to bring back US users’ access.
“We thank President Trump for providing the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties providing TikTok,” TikTok said in a statement Sunday. “We will work with President Trump on a long-term solution that keeps TikTok in the United States.”
The app’s return was welcomed by many of its 170 million American users.
“I was fully crying myself to sleep last night because it was just so sad and I felt like I’d lost a whole community and a job,” influencer Shay Sullivan, who has 1.1 million followers on TikTok, told CNN on Sunday. “Now, I’m just overjoyed. I’m having the best day … it was definitely a roller coaster.”
Still, bringing the app back for good may not be straightforward.
Ultimately, the law, which passed with bipartisan support and was signed by outgoing President Joe Biden last April, requires TikTok parent company ByteDance to sell the app to a buyer from the United States or one of its allies because of concerns that the app could pose a national security risk. And so far, ByteDance has, at least publicly, resisted the idea of a sale.
Trump on Sunday and again on Monday suggested that an American buyer should purchase half of the company and run it as a 50-50 joint venture with its current owners. But it’s unclear if that solution would satisfy those in Congress who passed the law, including members of Trump’s own party concerned about foreign control of a popular platform.
Putting the pressure on Trump
TikTok didn’t necessarily have to shut itself down.
The law requires only that TikTok’s technology partners — including Oracle, which hosts TikTok’s content in the United States, and Apple and Google, which host the app on their app stores — stop supporting the app or face fines of up to $5,000 per person who has access to the platform starting Sunday.
The Biden administration suggested last week that it would leave it up to Trump to implement and enforce the law once he took office.
Despite that assurance, a person close to TikTok said “multiple critical service partners” indicated to TikTok that they were concerned that the ban might be enforced starting Sunday — so the company decided to go dark.
The shutdown appeared aimed at ratcheting up pressure on Trump to act quickly; restoring access to the app could serve as a kind of immediate political victory for the incoming president with America’s youth, although it was Trump who first tried to ban the app during his previous term.
TikTok appealed to Trump in its pop-up message on the app starting late Saturday night notifying users that the app was unavailable in the United States.
“We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office,” the company posted in its pop-up message. “Please stay tuned!”
TikTok CEO Shou Chew — who was seated prominently at the inauguration Monday — also lauded Trump in a video Friday, saying, “we are grateful and pleased to have the support of a president who truly understands our platform, one who has used TikTok to express his own thoughts and perspectives, connecting with the world and generating more than 60 billion views of his content in the process.”
And TikTok thanked Trump when it restored the app, telling users, “As a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S.!”
Trump has suggested that he believes TikTok played a role in his election victory by bringing in young voters.
However, after the app was restored, many users expressed frustration at being part of what some called “political theatre” that appeared to be clearly aimed at boosting Trump’s image, although he was the first to try to ban TikTok during his previous administration. Some users questioned whether TikTok shut itself down not to protect its technology partners but so that Trump would look like the app’s savior, as it seeks to secure its future in the United States.
“Did we just get a 16-hour pop up ad for Donald Trump?” one user asked in a post.
Another user said in a video: “Why is everyone thanking Trump for wanting to ‘save’ TikTok when he was the one that put it on the map to be banned in the first place?”
A 75-day extension
Trump told NBC News on Saturday he would “most likely” delay the ban on TikTok for 90 days shortly after he takes office on Monday, before confirming that plan in his Truth Social post Sunday. It’s not clear why the executive action delayed enforcement for just 75 days.
With the executive action, Trump said he aimed to give TikTok parent company ByteDance more time to find a suitable buyer.
Still, even that effort could face legal challenges or pushback from Congress. The law gives the president the option to extend the ban deadline only if a deal to sell the platform is in process, and so far, ByteDance has publicly rejected the possibility of a sale. Both ByteDance and Chinese officials have also indicated they would be unwilling to sell TikTok’s US assets with its popular algorithm, the app’s secret sauce that makes it so valuable.
Spinning off an American-only version of TikTok could also mean the rest of the world has to download a new app to access US users’ content.
Several prominent Republican lawmakers have indicated they will resist an extension of the law.
“Now that the law has taken effect, there’s no legal basis for any kind of ‘extension’ of its effective date,” Senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Pete Ricketts of Nebraska said in a joint statement. “For TikTok to come back online in the future, ByteDance must agree to a sale that satisfies the law’s qualified-divestiture requirements by severing all ties between TikTok and Communist China. Only then will Americans be protected from the grave threat posed to their privacy and security by a communist-controlled TikTok.”
Cotton also said Sunday that “any company that hosts, distributes, services or other facilitates” was still taking a chance in helping restore TikTok ahead of Trump’s planned executive order. He said they could face “hundreds of billions of dollars of ruinous liability under the law, not just from DOJ, but also under securities law, shareholder lawsuits, and state AGs.”
But ByteDance may now reconsider its stance on a sale, having had to shut down the platform, albeit only briefly.
At least two potential buyers — a group led by billionaire Frank McCourt and “Shark Tank’s” Kevin O’Leary, as well as AI search engine PerplexityAI — have submitted formal bids for the app, and others have reportedly shown interest in TikTok.
McCourt’s buyer group has said it would buy TikTok’s US assets without the algorithm and rebuild the app, but tech giants like Meta and YouTube have for years worked to replicate TikTok’s popular algorithm without quite succeeding. O’Leary told CNN he met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago earlier this month to discuss the outlook for the app. And McCourt told CNN that ByteDance’s bankers have acknowledged receipt of the group’s bid, expected to be valued around $20 billion.
Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal also reported last week that China is weighing a sale to Elon Musk.
Musk may have the resources to buy the app, and he’s a major Trump supporter and about to take a quasi-role in his government. But it’s unclear that he would want to, and he has not publicly commented on the reports. TikTok called the reports “pure fiction.”
If ByteDance chooses to engage, Trump could perhaps argue that significant progress has been made on a deal and he has met the legal threshold needed to pause the ban.
But until a sale ultimately goes through, TikTok’s future will remain very much in doubt.
