This Saturday (18), the president-elect declared that he will carefully analyze the issue from Monday and that a ’90-day suspension’ will ‘probably be enacted’
The president-elect of the United States said he plans to give the Chinese owner of the a period of 90 days, from its inauguration on Monday (20), to find a non-Chinese owner for the social media application. “If I decide, it will probably be on Monday,” he said during an interview with NBC. The law provides for the possibility for the president to suspend its entry into force for three months.
In 2020, Trump tried to ban TikTok, but is now in favor of the app continuing to operate in the United States. The Republican discussed this topic with Chinese President Xi Jinping in a telephone conversation on Friday.
The social network’s president, Shou Chew, is among the guests of honor at Trump’s inauguration ceremony on Monday. Chew thanked Trump for his “commitment to working” together to “find a solution.” The social network has carried out intense lobbying to prevent the application of the rule, including Chew’s announced participation in the Republican’s inauguration.
However, TikTok’s owner, , says it will likely disable its platform’s wildly popular short videos in the US. “Unfortunately, TikTok will be forced to close on January 19,” ByteDance said in a statement on Friday, referring to the date the Controlled Foreign Adversaries Applications Act will take effect.
The law, which was upheld by the Supreme Court this week, says the ban will happen unless TikTok is sold to an owner who is not “controlled by a foreign adversary” and who is not a threat to national security.
Any company that allows just one of TikTok’s 170 million U.S. users to access its content could face fines totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. Under the law, this includes the app’s parent company, based in China, as well as US service providers such as Apple, Oracle and Google’s parent company Alphabet.
ByteDance and groups of TikTok marketers sought last-minute assurances that the Democratic Biden administration would not enforce the statute in the remaining days before Trump’s inauguration. Those assurances were not disclosed, ByteDance said in its Friday statement.
On the same day, the White House said it would leave enforcement of the statute to the next administration. However, a Justice Department announcement praised the Supreme Court’s decision for protecting Americans from China’s authoritarian regime.
Find out more
The Supreme Court on Friday unanimously upheld a law that would ban the social network from Sunday if its Chinese owners do not put it up for sale by January 19. In a major defeat for TikTok, the high court ruled that the law does not infringe on the right to free speech and that the United States government has shown that its concerns about Chinese ownership of the platform are legitimate.
“There is no doubt that for more than 170 million Americans, TikTok provides an important avenue of expression, an engagement tool, and a way to build community,” the judges said in their decision.
“But Congress has determined that the assignment (of ownership) is necessary to address its well-founded national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and its relationship with a foreign adversary,” they concluded.
With this decision, the date for the ban to come into force remains Sunday (19), although legislators and authorities from across the political spectrum have called for some form of postponement. The law in question was designed as a response to the widespread belief in Washington that TikTok is being used by China for espionage or propaganda purposes.
*With information from Estadão Conteúdo and AFP
Posted by Carolina Ferreira
