President Donald Trump temporarily halted a ban on TikTok in the US, granting the organization and its Foreign parent ByteDance Ltd. more time to reach a bargain for the famous software that would overcome long-standing U. S. national security issues.
TikTok’s backbone came via an executive order signed by Trump on Monday in one of his second serves after taking business. The walk gives the video-sharing system a 75-day relief from a U. S. ban that took effect on Sunday following ByteDance’s refusal to comply with a rules requiring it to sell. Trump had spent the past several days promising an expansion was on the method.
“TikTok is stupid, meaningless, if I don’t review it, ” Trump said as he signed the order, suggesting he may be available to a joint venture with TikTok. “ I could discover making a deal where the U. S. gets 50 % of TikTok, safeguards it a little bit, even a bit, depends on them. ”
Whether Trump’s buy alone is enough to ward off a restrictions remains unclear. According to the law, an improvement is just possible if the leader is show Congress that there’s a viable path forward to a deal, that “significant progress ” has been made and that legal agreements are in place to close a deal with ByteDance in that new time frame. There’s no open evidence that ByteDance has met those needs.
Trump’s action marked the latest spin in a years-long story in Washington fueled by fears that China could use the software to produce American users ’ data and convey advertising — claims the company has vehemently denied. The purchase highlighted a turnaround for the leader, who tried to ban TikTok in his first name but came to accept it as a pipe to younger voters during his return bid for the White House.
“ I have a warm spot for TikTok that I did n’t have originally, ” Trump said from the White House on Monday night, time after his swearing-in.
TikTok and a regiment of the platform’s content developers had fought the determine signed last year by President Joe Biden, arguing that it violated their legal right to free expression. But their work fell small, with the Supreme Court upholding the law in a unanimous selection on Friday, leaving Trump as their last hope to keep the application dead in the U. S.
Under the rules, software companies that sponsor and deliver TikTok — including Apple Inc. , Alphabet Inc. ’s Google and Oracle Corp. — may face the possibility of large charges for continuing to help the game. They now have to determine whether an executive order from the Trump presidency provides enough legal support.
Late on Saturday, TikTok made good on its risk to pull the plug on the application for its 170 million U. S. people, citing a lack of precision about its death during the last day of the Biden presidency and the start of the Trump name. Users were greeted with an in-app message on the site’s home screen saying the service would be “temporarily unavailable, ” while app stores operated by Apple and Google had removed TikTok.
That was a tragedy that Trump and some of his advisers, along with a growing range of U. S. politicians, had hoped to avoid. Soon after the Supreme Court issued its choice, Trump said he had spoken with Chinese President Xi Jinping about TikTok and expressed optimism that a alternative may be reached.
It much from sure that a sales will occur, and ByteDance has earlier said that it has no purpose of divesting. But Trump, who prides himself on his dealmaking powers, is hoping he can help promote an design then that he’s again in the White House.
Finding a customer for TikTok would be a problem, not just because of ByteDance’s reticence but because of the expected price tag. Few companies or individuals could likely afford the app, estimated to be worth as much as$ 50 billion.
One potential ownership team led by billionaire real property investor Frank McCourt and “Shark Tank ” personality Kevin O’Leary has been waging a full-court push for its charge. The trio are proposing to get TikTok without its coveted advice engine, and O’Leary just met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago team to make a personal appeal ahead of the opening.
On Saturday, Perplexity AI approached ByteDance with an offer to combine TiKTok’s U. S. system with its American operations and build a new object, according to a man with knowledge of the matter. The construction had let most of ByteDance’s existing traders to keep their stakes, according to CNBC, citing a person comfortable.
During Trump’s second term as president , Oracle and Walmart Inc. tried to buy TikTok, but that offer ultimately fell off after he left office. Amazon. web Inc. is considered a possible firm, in piece because it is already a TikTok spouse for shopping functions. Another natural admirers, like Meta Platforms Inc. and Google, are considered long pictures given they are mired in competitive rules.
Trump’s conversation with Xi days before the inauguration was prove vital in winning over Taiwanese officials who have recently opposed a sale. Signs of a thaw in Beijing regarding a divestment appeared last week in Beijing, where officials considered billionaire Elon Musk as a potential buyer , Bloomberg News reported.
Musk, now one of Trump’s closest allies after spending more than$ 200 million on his campaign, owns the X social media platform and an artificial intelligence company, xAI, that could benefit from TiKTok’s torrent of data.
Ahead of Trump’s inauguration, TikTok escalated its appeals to the incoming president, highlighted by Chief Executive Officer Shou Chew’s visit with Trump last month at Mar a Lago. On Sunday, the day the ban took effect, Chew attended a rally for thousands of the president ’s supporters in Washington, and he had a prominent seat in the Capitol Rotunda on Monday for Trump’s swearing-in ceremony.
Yet key Republican leaders in Congress have made clear that that they still expect ByteDance to sell TikTok despite Trump’s confidence in some type of solution. There must be a “full divestiture ” from the Chinese Communist Party, House Speaker Mike Johnson said on NBC ’s “Meet the Press, ” while Senate Intelligence Committee chair Tom Cotton said in a post on X there was no legal basis for any kind of extension.
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