TikTok’s time is running out, but the U.S. presidential election might have delivered it an unlikely savior.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump led the initial charge to ban the hugely popular video-sharing app during his first term, primarily over concerns that its ownership by Chinese tech giant ByteDance would lead to private user data falling into the hands of the Chinese government. That ban, carried out via executive order, was overturned by President Joe Biden in 2021 after multiple courts blocked Trump’s order.
TikTok’s time is running out, but the U.S. presidential election might have delivered it an unlikely savior.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump led the initial charge to ban the hugely popular video-sharing app during his first term, primarily over concerns that its ownership by Chinese tech giant ByteDance would lead to private user data falling into the hands of the Chinese government. That ban, carried out via executive order, was overturned by President Joe Biden in 2021 after multiple courts blocked Trump’s order.
You could be forgiven for feeling a sense of déjà vu (albeit with a role reversal) this year.
The Biden administration has gotten progressively more hawkish on China over the last four years, spurred on by a Washington consensus that sees halting China’s technological advancement as imperative. TikTok once again became the prime target of that consensus this year, with more than 80 percent of lawmakers across both chambers of Congress voting to ban the app in April unless it was sold to a U.S. company. Biden signed that bill into law, though the nine-month deadline for ByteDance to divest itself of TikTok ensured the app’s fate wouldn’t be sealed before the Nov. 5 election. That deadline is set to expire on Jan. 19, the day before Trump takes office. But TikTok’s legal challenge to the ban is still with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and could potentially make its way up to the Supreme Court, kicking the can several months into Trump’s second term.
That is likely good news for TikTok, considering Trump’s opposition to the platform appears to have dissolved. Multiple Trump allies told the Washington Post this week that he would halt the ban, and Trump said on the campaign trail that he would “save TikTok”—in a video posted to his TikTok account that now has more than 14 million followers.
TikTok and its 170 million-plus U.S. users face a now familiar wait for the app’s fate, though perhaps with a bit more optimism than they might have previously had.
This post is part of FP’s ongoing coverage of the Trump transition. Follow along here.
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