TikTok Poised for Reprieve as Trump Team Pledges Extension
(Bloomberg) -- TikTok is poised to win a reprieve from a law that would ban the popular social media app thanks to a holiday weekend and a pledge from President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration to give its Chinese owner more time to divest.
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Under the law, ByteDance Ltd. is required to find a buyer for TikTok or face a shutdown on Jan. 19, while a president can grant a 90-day extension on that deadline if a serious purchase negotiation is underway. While no such deal is imminent, two current Biden administration officials say that the Sunday deadline — and Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday on Monday — essentially punts enforcement to the next administration. That opens the door for Trump to extend the deadline.
The two Biden officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, cast the situation as a recognition of enforcement realities and said the administration hadn’t changed its position that TikTok should be sold to a US buyer. But the timing of the statutory deadline effectively means it will be up to the Trump administration to enforce, they said. One of the officials said TikTok users should not expect an immediate shutdown on Sunday.
Michael Waltz, Trump’s incoming national security advisor, has already said the next administration intends to find a way to extend the deadline.
“We will put measures in place to keep TikTok from going dark,” Waltz told Fox News’s Fox and Friends on Thursday morning, adding that the law on the impending ban “allows for an extension as long as a viable deal is on the table.”
“That buys President Trump time to keep TikTok going,” said Waltz, who had voted for the ban last year while serving in the US House.
With a ban on TikTok just days away, spurred by concerns the app is both a data security risk and a propaganda tool of the Chinese state, politicians in both major US parties have been seeking ways to keep it accessible to American users. Trump, who sought to ban TikTok during his first term, has since embraced the app, crediting it with helping him bolster his outreach to young voters.
“It’s been a great platform for him and his campaign to get his America First message out. But at the same time, he wants to protect their data,” Waltz said Thursday. “Conservatives don’t want the FBI, and they certainly don’t want, the Chinese Communists getting their passwords, getting their data and being able to overly influence the American people.”
Potential Deals
Shou Chew, TikTok’s chief executive officer, plans to attend Trump’s inauguration, according to a person familiar with his plans who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss them.
There are efforts on Capitol Hill to put off the deadline. A group of Democratic lawmakers, including Senators Edward Markey of Massachusetts, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Cory Booker of New Jersey, this week introduced legislation which would give the company another 270 days to reach a deal.
Although ByteDance has refused to sell, earlier this week people familiar with the matter said Chinese officials were evaluating a potential option that involves Elon Musk acquiring the US operations of TikTok if the company fails to fend off the ban. Musk is a prominent ally of Trump and has a role in the incoming administration.
Musk and his representatives did not respond to a request for comment. A ByteDance representative said the company “can’t be expected to comment on pure fiction.”
Earlier: China Weighs Sale of TikTok US to Musk as a Possible Option
Billionaires Frank McCourt and Kevin O’Leary could also be palatable buyers because they are not interested in acquiring TikTok’s coveted algorithm, which ByteDance and Beijing have emphasized is not for sale.
O’Leary recently met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago to discuss their so-called “Project Liberty” bid, and McCourt and his team have spoken with more than 60 elected officials and policymakers about their plans for what McCourt has described as “TikTok 2.0.”
Oracle Corp. and Amazon.com Inc., companies TikTok already does business with, have also been floated as possible contenders.
Legal Challenge
TikTok is challenging the impending ban before the US Supreme Court, though the justices indicated during arguments last week they are inclined to uphold the divest-or-ban law.
Even if they uphold the law, TikTok won’t disappear off Americans’ phones on Sunday. Those in the US will no longer be able to download TikTok from Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google app stores, and those who already have the app installed will no longer be able to update it, but the platform will remain usable at least temporarily.
There is also an open question around whether Trump, once in office, might direct the DOJ not to enforce the law, and how US tech companies charged with complying — such as Apple, Google and Oracle that must stop hosting or distributing the TikTok app in the US — would respond.
Companies found violating the law could be subject to severe penalties determined by “multiplying $5,000 by the number of users,” according to the law, and in a country where more than half the population is on TikTok, those fines could easily climb into the billions.
TikTok could be readying separate plans to simply shut the app down on Sunday, according to a report in The Information, a move aimed at mobilizing many of its 170 million American users to push the new administration to take action to save the app. TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether it has presented a divestiture plan to the Biden administration.
Content creators are already organizing online to pressure Trump to deliver on his campaign promises to keep the app alive.
Some US users appear to be seeking alternatives to TikTok, with a pair of Chinese-made social media apps, Xiaohongshu and Lemon8, rising in Apple’s iPhone download charts. Total downloads of Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote, in the US may have exceeded 2 million within just three days, according to Hennessey Digital, a California-based digital marketing agency.
--With assistance from Jacob Gu.
(Updates to add details on TikTok alternatives in last paragraph)
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