Will President-elect Trump throw a "lifeline" for TikTok in the US?
Báo Dân trí•13/11/2024
(Dan Tri) - Many experts believe that the video social networking application TikTok may escape the risk of being banned early next year after Donald Trump is elected president.
US President-elect Donald Trump (Photo: Reuters).
In July, Mr. Trump, then a Republican candidate, said he did not want TikTok to be banned, even if its parent company ByteDance did not divest in the US. Mr. Trump said he supported TikTok because he wanted social networks like Facebook and Instagram in the US to have competition. In April, US President Joe Biden signed a law requiring TikTok to sell its US assets by January 19, 2025, or it would be completely banned in this country. On his own social network Truth Social, Mr. Trump once declared that voters who wanted to protect TikTok should vote for him. According to the New York Times, Mr. Trump's victory has made TikTok hope that he will be a "lifesaver" for this social network. Previously, sources said that TikTok would rather shut down than sell itself. TikTok has also filed a lawsuit against the US government to overturn the law signed by Mr. Biden, arguing that this would deprive the freedom of speech stipulated in the US Constitution. After winning the election, Mr. Trump’s transition team said he would keep his election promises, including TikTok, although the details of the move remained unclear. “The American people overwhelmingly elected Mr. Trump, giving him a mandate to deliver on the promises he made during the campaign. He will keep those promises,” said Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump’s transition team. Mr. Trump’s support for TikTok is a reversal from 2020, when he tried to block the app in the United States and force TikTok to sell its stake to American companies because it was owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance. The law signed by Mr. Biden sets a deadline for TikTok’s parent company to divest its US holdings by January 19, exactly one day before Mr. Trump takes office. Trump publicly changed his stance on TikTok in March. At that time, he met with billionaire Republican donor Jeff Yass, who owns a stake in ByteDance. Yass is one of the biggest backers of the lobbying group Club for Growth, which hired Kellyanne Conway, a former senior adviser to Trump, to lobby TikTok in Washington. TikTok also reached out to Republicans and the Trump campaign through Tony Sayegh, a former Treasury official in the Trump administration, according to the New York Times. Sayegh is believed to have been a key factor in Trump’s decision to join TikTok this summer. Trump has seen strong growth on the social network, now with 14.4 million followers. Many of his family members are also on the social network. TikTok has also reached out to Democrats. Former Democratic strategists have also worked for the company, including David Plouffe, who worked on Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign, several sources said. And Harris’s campaign’s strength on TikTok, where she has amassed more than 9 million followers, has been well documented. An Uncertain Future Now that Trump is set to take office in a few months, TikTok’s fate has come into focus, though many experts are unclear about what he will do to prevent TikTok from being banned in the US. The deadline is looming ahead of Trump’s inauguration, and some of his top appointees have taken a hard line on China. While Trump’s election may be a boon for TikTok because of his support for the social network, TikTok will still have to undergo structural changes to stay in the US, said Ian Tang, an expert at Capstone Research. Alan Rozenshtein, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, said Trump could ask the Justice Department to temporarily suspend enforcement of the law, but that would put tech companies like Apple and Google in a difficult position because the law would prohibit them from distributing the TikTok app to users through tech stores. Experts say TikTok would need an act of Congress to overturn the law, which Biden signed in April. But Rozenshtein said that scenario is unlikely. The most Trump could intervene in would be the part of the law that gives the president the authority to determine whether ByteDance has done enough to distance TikTok from China. ByteDance could make some changes so the US can review whether that requirement has been met, Rozenshtein said. Under the law, Trump could also extend the suspension by three months if his administration believes there has been significant progress. Jacob Helberg, a senior adviser at AI software company Palantir Technologies, believes Trump will find a way to address concerns about TikTok’s Chinese ownership while keeping the app operating in the U.S. “President Trump will bring a new approach to this,” Helberg said, adding that Trump is an “innovative” thinker.
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