{"id":9342,"date":"2025-01-21T15:50:24","date_gmt":"2025-01-21T07:50:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/?p=9342"},"modified":"2025-01-21T15:50:27","modified_gmt":"2025-01-21T07:50:27","slug":"trump-issues-an-executive-order-to-suspend-the-us-tiktok-ban-but-can-it-stick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/?p=9342","title":{"rendered":"Trump issues an executive order to suspend the US TikTok ban. But can it stick?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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APTOPIX Trump Inauguration\u00a9\u00a0Kevin Lamarque<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday to keep TikTok operating for 75 days, a relief to the social media platform\u2019s users even as national security questions persist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TikTok\u2019s China-based parent ByteDance was supposed to find a U.S. buyer or be banned on Jan. 19<\/a>. Trump\u2019s order could give ByteDance more time to find a buyer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Trump Inauguration\u00a9\u00a0Saul Loeb<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI guess I have a warm spot for TikTok,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shou Zi Chew, TikTok\u2019s CEO, attended Trump\u2019s inauguration earlier in the day, seated with American tech heavyweights<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump has amassed nearly 15 million followers on TikTok since he joined last year<\/a>, and he has credited the trendsetting platform with helping him gain traction among young voters. Yet its 170 million U.S. users could not access TikTok for more than 12 hours between Saturday night and Sunday morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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TikTok Ban\u00a9\u00a0Jeff Chiu<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The platform went offline before the ban\u00a0approved by Congress<\/a>\u00a0and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court took effect Sunday. After Trump promised he would pause the ban Monday,\u00a0TikTok restored access<\/a>\u00a0for existing users. Google and Apple, however, still have not reinstated TikTok to\u00a0their app stores<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Business leaders, lawmakers, legal scholars, and influencers who make money on TikTok are watching to see how Trump tries to resolve a thicket of regulatory, legal, financial and geopolitical issues with his signature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How did the TikTok ban come about?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

TikTok’s app allows users to create and watch short-form videos, and broke new ground by operating with an algorithm that fed viewers recommendations based on their viewing habits. But concerns about its potential to serve as a tool for Beijing to manipulate and spy on Americans pre-date Trump’s first presidency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2020, Trump issued executive orders<\/a> banning dealings with ByteDance and the owners of the Chinese messaging app WeChat. Courts ended up blocking the orders, but less than a year ago Congress overwhelmingly passed a law citing national security concerns to ban TikTok unless ByteDance sold it to an approved buyer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The law, which went into force Sunday, allows for fines of up to $5,000 per U.S. TikTok user against major mobile app stores \u2014 like the ones operated by Apple and Google \u2014 and internet hosting services like Oracle if they continued to distribute TikTok to U.S. users beyond the deadline for ByteDance’s divestment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump on Sunday said he had asked TikTok’s U.S. service providers to continue supporting the platform and app while he prepared to sign an executive order to stop the ban for now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe order will also confirm that there will be no liability for any company that helped keep TikTok from going dark before my order,\u201d Trump posted on Truth Social, his social networking site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The law that Congress passed and now-former President Joe Biden signed in April allowed for a 90-day extension if there had been progress toward a sale before the statute’s effective date. Less certain is whether that provision can be applied retroactively, according to Sarah Kreps, director of Cornell University\u2019s Tech Policy Institute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cExecutive orders cannot override existing laws,\u201d Kreps said. \u201cIt\u2019s not clear that the new president has that authority to issue the 90-day extension of a law that\u2019s already gone into effect.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What difference might the sale of TikTok make?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Kreps also doubts the conditions for a delay exist at this point without so much as even a potential buyer being named to prove that a sale was moving along.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Alan Rozenshtein, a University of Minnesota law professor, has written that the law also empowers the president to decide what constitutes a “qualified divestiture\u201d \u2014 suggesting Trump could have discretion to say whether or when ByteDance meets the terms of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although ByteDance spent months repeating it wasn’t interested in selling, Beijing on Monday also signaled a possible easing on China’s stance on TikTok to allow it to be divested from its Chinese parent company. China\u2019s vice president<\/a> held meetings with Vice President JD Vance and Tesla tech titan Elon Musk<\/a> on Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning, said Monday that business operations and acquisitions \u201cshould be independently decided by companies in accordance with market principles.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf it involves Chinese companies, China\u2019s laws and regulations should be observed,\u201d Mao said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until now, it was widely believed that Beijing would not allow the sale of TikTok, which had come to embody China\u2019s defiance in the face of \u201cU.S. robbery.\u201d However, TikTok was among several issues brought up in a phone call between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Trump on Friday, though details were not available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump on Monday said he is looking to have the U.S. government broker a deal for 50% control of TikTok, adding that \u201cevery rich person\u201d has called him about acquiring the social media platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think the U.S. should be entitled to get half of TikTok and, congratulations, TikTok has a good partner and that would be worth, you know, could be $500 billion,\u201d Trump said. \u201cThe numbers are crazy, but it\u2019s worthless\u201d without a U.S. buyer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who or what can enforce the ban?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Justice Department is generally tasked with enforcing the laws of the federal government. Trump\u2019s executive order instructs the U.S. attorney general not to take any action to enforce the TikTok ban for 75 days \u201cto allow my Administration an opportunity 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such a move might itself be subject to legal scrutiny but would buy time for TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump\u2019s efforts to save TikTok may put him at odds with some of the House members and senators who voted for the law, which received broad bipartisan support. House Speaker Mike Johnson called ByteDance’s ownership \u201ca very dangerous thing,\u201d and said he expected a full sale to happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think we will enforce the law,\u201d Johnson told NBC News\u2019 \u201cMeet the Press\u201d on Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Legislators now stand to \u201clook a little bit silly\u201d if the ban doesn\u2019t last, Kreps said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c(The case) becomes about the separations of powers, and checks and balances, that we don\u2019t have a king who decides what happens with the law,\u201d Kreps said. \u201cEnforcement isn\u2019t only up to the executive branch.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What are other potential legal obstacles?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, in a message posted on X, listed a number of state and federal agencies, and private entities, that might be willing to go to court to get the ban enforced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAny company that hosts, distributes, services, or otherwise facilitates communist-controlled TikTok 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,\u201d Cotton noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the intense scrutiny and potential costs involved, the machinations over TikTok are in some ways just business as usual for the tech companies involved, according to Gus Hurwitz, a legal scholar with the International Center for Law and Economics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe fines that we\u2019re talking about are civil penalties and companies risk civil penalties all the time,\u201d Hurwitz said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, the hard business calculus of complying with a law in limbo or risk defying a president who holds lucrative federal contracts over those companies could come into focus if shareholders sue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oracle, for example, has a part of the Pentagon\u2019s $9 billion contract<\/a> to build its cloud computing network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis actually could be the right business decision to make,\u201d Hurwitz said. \u201cThat\u2019s not necessarily a breach of duty to shareholders.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which companies are deciding whether to trust Trump’s assurances?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s been lots of questions about how companies such as Oracle and Akamai Technologies are powering TikTok\u2019s servers to stay online, while others such as Apple and Google have made the app unavailable for new users to download.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

None of the companies have responded to requests for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oracle in 2020 announced it had a 12.5% stake in TikTok Global after securing its business as the app\u2019s cloud technology provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, as of Monday night, a search for TikTok on Apple\u2019s app store directs to an online statement that reads in part: \u201cApple is obligated to follow the laws in the jurisdictions where it operates,\u201d while Google\u2019s app store notes downloads for TikTok \u201care paused due to current US legal requirements.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday to keep TikTok operating for 75 days, a relief to the social media platform\u2019s users even as national security questions persist. TikTok\u2019s China-based parent ByteDance was supposed to find a U.S. buyer or be banned on Jan. 19. Trump\u2019s order could give ByteDance more time to find a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":9343,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[1804,1177,1724],"class_list":["post-9342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-usa","tag-executive","tag-tiktok","tag-trump"],"yoast_head":"\nTrump issues an executive order to suspend the US TikTok ban. 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