In order to give himself more time after taking office to seek a “political resolution” to the problem, President-elect Donald Trump has urged the US Supreme Court to halt the implementation of a law that would either ban the popular social media app TikTok or force its sale.
The court will hear arguments in the case on January 10.
The law required ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, to sell the platform to an American company or face a potential ban. In April, the US Congress decided to outlaw it unless ByteDance sold the app by January 19.
With more than 170 million users in the US, TikTok and its parent company have attempted to have the law overturned. However, on January 19, one day before Trump takes office, the app might be essentially banned in the US if the court does not rule in their favor and no divestment takes place.
Trump’s backing of TikTok is a reversal of his 2020 attempt to ban the app in the US and compel its sale to US businesses due to its Chinese ownership.
Additionally, it demonstrates how hard the business worked to gain favor with Trump and his team during the presidential campaign.
D. John Sauer, Trump’s attorney and the president-elect’s choice for the US solicitor general, stated that “President Trump takes no position on the underlying merits of this dispute.”
Instead, he politely asks the Court to consider delaying the Act’s divestment deadline of January 19, 2025, while it thinks about the case’s merits. This would give President Trump’s new administration the chance to try to find a political solution to the issues at hand, he said.
Trump previously met with Shou Zi Chew, the CEO of TikTok, in December, just hours after the president-elect said he had a “warm spot” for the app and that he supported TikTok continuing to operate in the US for a short time.
The president-elect added that during his campaign, he had billions of views on the social media site.
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Asserting that its content recommendation engine and user data are stored in the United States on cloud servers run by Oracle Corp. and that content moderation decisions that impact US users are also made in the United States, the company has previously claimed the Justice Department has misrepresented its ties to China.
Separately, proponents of free speech told the Supreme Court on Friday that the US law against TikTok is reminiscent of the censorship systems established by the US’s authoritarian adversaries.
The majority of US lawmakers agree with the US Justice Department’s assertion that Chinese control over TikTok continues to threaten national security.
In an amicus brief filed Friday, Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen led a group of 22 attorneys general in requesting that the Supreme Court uphold the national TikTok divest-or-ban law.
