Donald Trump pledged Sunday to delay enforcement of a national security law that threatened to ban TikTok, but it\u2019s not clear that the app\u2019s Chinese parent company has satisfied the requirements necessary to extend the deadline to find a possible buyer and avoid a permanent shutdown. <\/p>\n
There are also questions about whether the extension would be legal once the ban kicked in on Sunday. <\/p>\n
And while Trump gained praise from some TikTok users for the reprieve, he may face long-time skeptics in his own Republican Party about what they see as the app\u2019s ongoing national security threat. <\/p>\n
\u201cI will issue an executive order on Monday to extend the period of time before the law\u2019s prohibitions take effect, so that we can make a deal to protect our national security,\u201d Trump wrote on Truth Social. <\/p>\n
His declaration, and other assurances made to TikTok\u2019s service providers, was enough for TikTok to restore its popular video network, which had been taken down late the night before. <\/p>\n
The reprieve brokered by Trump may only be temporary, though. The law requires TikTok\u2019s Chinese owner, ByteDance Ltd., to sell the service\u2019s US business to a buyer approved by the US government. <\/p>\n
The law does allow Trump to extend the deadline for such a deal by up to 90 days, which he has said he\u2019ll do on his first day in office, which begins Monday. But it\u2019s not clear that TikTok and ByteDance have taken the steps toward an acquisition that are required to merit such an extension. <\/p>\n
Under the national security law, which was signed by President Joe Biden in April, Trump can grant TikTok more time to finalise a deal only by certifying to Congress that a \u201cqualified divestiture\u201d is in motion. He must show that there\u2019s a viable path forward, that \u201csignificant progress\u201d has been made toward a deal and that legal agreements are in place to close a deal with ByteDance in that new time frame, according to the law. <\/p>\n
Though there are some parties interested in acquiring TikTok\u2019s US business, there is no known front-runner or public evidence that \u201csignificant progress\u201d has been made on negotiations. ByteDance has maintained for the better part of a year that it is unwilling to sell TikTok at all, though that calculus could change now that a ban is finally imminent. <\/p>\n
Unless Trump and ByteDance can prove that a deal is in the works, it\u2019s unclear if the president-elect\u2019s executive order will succeed in keeping TikTok available. If Congress fails to certify Trump\u2019s proposed extension, it could put tech companies like Apple Inc., Google and Oracle Corp. in a legal limbo since they could face significant fines for technologically supporting the app and offering it in their app stores. <\/p>\n
Key Republican leaders have made clear that that they still expect ByteDance to sell TikTok despite Trump\u2019s confidence in some type of solution. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere needs to be a sale, a full divestiture, from the Chinese Communist Party,\u201d House Speaker Mike Johnson said on NBC\u2019s Meet the Press. Senate intelligence chair Tom Cotton also said in social media post on X that there \u201cwas no legal basis for any kind of \u2018extension\u2019\u201d of the law\u2019s effective date.<\/p>\n
TikTok on Sunday displayed confidence to users, who remain unsure of the app\u2019s future. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe will work with President Trump on a long-term solution that keeps TikTok in the United States,\u201d the company said in a statement. <\/p>\n
What that solution is, whether it will be allowed by ByteDance and officials in China, and whether Congress will accept Trump\u2019s demand for more time remain unclear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Donald Trump pledged Sunday to delay enforcement of a national security law that threatened to ban TikTok, but it\u2019s not clear that the app\u2019s Chinese parent company has satisfied the requirements necessary to extend the deadline to find a possible buyer and avoid a permanent shutdown. There are also questions about whether the extension would be legal once the ban kicked in on Sunday. And while Trump gained praise from some TikTok users for the reprieve, he may face long-time skeptics in his own Republican Party about what they see as the app\u2019s ongoing national security threat. \u201cI will issue […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-897807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-telecom"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=897807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897807\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=897807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=897807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=897807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}