It didn’t take long. Shortly after taking office, President Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders. Among them was a temporary pause in the law banning TikTok in the United States.
With the executive order, the Trump Justice Department will not apply the Protecting Americans from Requests Controlled by Foreign Adversaries Act for 75 days, extending the time the company has to reach an agreement. In a statement, Trump said the “unfortunate timing” of the law, which took effect during the final hours of President Joe Biden’s term, “interferes with my ability to assess the implications of the law’s prohibitions on national security and foreign policy before they are made.” effect.”
He wrote that he would review “sensitive intelligence” related to national security concerns raised by critics of the app and “assess the sufficiency of the mitigation measures TikTok has taken to date.” The company had already undertaken a years-long effort, known as Project Texas, to move U.S. user data to servers hosted by Oracle. This arrangement was reached after years of negotiations with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), but these negotiations arrested last year.
TikTok (and other ByteDance apps) were taken offline on Saturday evening before the law took effect on Sunday. The TikTok outage, however, only lasted a few hours. Service was gradually restored after Trump pledged to sign an executive order suspending the law after he was sworn in on Monday. He claimed there would be “no liability for any company that helped keep TikTok from going dark before my order.” Trump has also proposed a joint venture that would see US interests take a 50% stake in TikTok.
Earlier on Monday, China (where ByteDance is based) signaled its willingness to strike a deal with the United States that would allow TikTok to remain active there long-term, although it previously said it would block a forced sale of the application. “When it comes to actions such as operating and acquiring companies, we believe they should be decided independently by companies in accordance with market principles,” said the spokesperson. word of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mao Ning. “If they are Chinese companies, Chinese laws and regulations must be respected.”
During his first administration, Trump sought to ban TikTok in the United States. He signed executive orders to this effect, which included an attempt to force ByteDance to sell its US operations. This didn’t happen at the time. But pressure on TikTok has increased under the Biden administration, with the former president signing a bill last year calling on ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a ban in the United States.
