US President-elect Donald Trump is considering issuing an executive order upon taking office that would suspend the forced sale of TikTok for 60 to 90 days, threatening to block the platform in the US. This will allow his administration to negotiate or find a temporary solution – otherwise the social network could be blocked as early as next Sunday.
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Trump is mulling ways to save the popular short-video platform, exploring the possibility of striking an unconventional deal or making a legal maneuver, such as issuing an executive order that could weaken a law that Congress passed last year, the Washington Post reports, citing two sources. The politician is interested in becoming the savior of a platform on which he believes he enjoys universal respect – something his aides and business allies are trying to find. Trump needs to address this issue because he has repeatedly made a campaign promise on his social media page to “save TikTok,” where he has 14 million followers.
But it is not clear how to do this. The law, passed by Congress and signed by current President Joe Biden, requires Chinese tech giant ByteDance to sell the platform by January 19 or face immediate ban in the US. Last week, the country’s Supreme Court considered a lawsuit by the TikTok administration, which insists that the law is unconstitutional; a decision has not yet been made, but the court is not expected to suspend the law. And even a presidential decree, experts are sure, will not be able to completely overcome the law adopted by Congress.
During his first term as president, Trump himself tried to get TikTok banned, but in recent years he has praised the app, contrasting it with the Meta✴ platforms on which his pages were banned and seeing TikTok as an opportunity to reach a younger audience. In December, Singapore-based TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago residence; Soon after, Trump posted statistics on his Truth Social platform showing that he is a TikTok star, and his presidential campaign videos have received 4 billion views – more than his rival Kamala Harris, Fox News Channel and performer Taylor Swift (Taylor Swift).
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The new president could push Congress to repeal the law, which seems a dubious option because it was supported by both major US parties. Another option is to instruct the Prosecutor General not to apply it, that is, to actually pretend that such a law does not exist; Trump’s choice for this position, Pam Bondi, refused to answer the question of whether she would comply with the requirements of this law when confirming her candidacy. It is also possible that TikTok will be sold only partially, so that the presidential administration takes credit for the conclusion of the deal, and the requirements of the law are formally met – it involves a “qualified sale” of the platform’s assets.
An actual sale of TikTok seems highly unlikely, Washington Post sources say, because the assets involved are valued at $50 billion. There are also doubts about TikTok’s attractiveness to potential buyers—numerous competitors, including YouTube and Instagram, have their own versions of the short video platform. TikTok called “pure fiction” the information that Chinese officials were discussing transferring the platform to the control of Elon Musk’s social network X. The Trump camp has floated the idea of reviving Project Texas, a $1.5 billion package of radical reforms to TikTok that the platform offered to the Biden administration in exchange for dropping claims. The program includes sweeping powers by U.S. authorities over the platform, including veto rights over hiring and software deployment decisions and even a “kill switch” if TikTok, according to U.S. federal authorities, crosses the line.
To complicate the situation, ByteDance is categorically against the sale of TikTok and dismisses talk of it as meaningless. The uncertainty has a demoralizing effect on the employees of TikTok itself, although the platform administration intends to continue working in any conditions, even if the situation is not resolved and the social network client disappears from app stores for American users.