It was thanks to the intervention of Donald Trump last Sunday that the period of forced inactivity of the social network TikTok in the United States was limited to a few hours. On his first day in office as the 47th President of the United States, the politician signed a decree that introduces a 75-day delay on the ban on TikTok in the country.
Image Source: TikTok, Shou Zi Chew
As Reuters notes, in the text of the decree, the US President requires the Attorney General not to facilitate the entry into force of the law of April last year, which was supposed to ban the operation of the TikTok social network in the US from January 19 under the previous ownership structure, implying control over it by a Chinese company ByteDance. Trump generally does not reject the idea of selling TikTok’s American business to some local company, which was initially promoted by law, but gives the parties to the deal and his own administration a 75-day delay to resolve all related issues.
The executive order signed by Trump also requires the US Department of Justice to notify Apple, Google and Oracle in writing that they have not violated the law if they continue to support the TikTok infrastructure for a specified period. As noted in the text of the decree, the delay is given to the US administration “for the sake of obtaining the opportunity to decide on further actions regarding TikTok.” Trump himself, after signing the decree, said: “Just give me the right to sell it or close it.” The US President also added that he will need time to make an appropriate decision. The outcome of the deal will depend on the Chinese side, but Trump expressed confidence that it will approve it. If this does not happen, he is ready to influence China with customs tariffs, the value of which can vary from 25 to 100%.