Trump delays TikTok ban for at least 75 days via executive order
That didn’t take long. Shortly after taking office, President Donald Trump signed a number of executive orders. Among them was a temporary pause in the law which ban TikTok in the US.
With the executive order, Trump’s Department of Justice will not impose The Protecting Americans from Apps Controlled by Foreign Enemies Act for 75 days, effectively extending the time the company has to reach a deal. In a statement, Trump said the “unfortunate timing” of the law, which took effect during President Joe Biden’s final hours in office, “impeded my ability to assess the national security and foreign policy implications of the law’s bans before they to be taken effect.”
He wrote that he would review “sensitive intelligence” related to national security concerns raised by the app’s critics and “assess the sufficiency of the mitigation measures TikTok has taken to date.” Before that, the company made many years of effort, known as Project Texasto move user data from the US to servers hosted by Oracle. The agreement was reached after years of negotiations with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), but those talks stopped last year.
TikTok (i other ByteDance apps) went offline late Saturday before the law takes effect Sunday. However, the TikTok outage only lasted a few hours. Service was gradually restored after Trump promised to sign an executive order to suspend the law after he was sworn in on Monday. He confirmed that there would be “no liability for any company that helped keep TikTok from going dark before my order.” Trump also proposed a joint venture that would allow US interests to take a 50 percent stake in TikTok.
Earlier Monday, China (where ByteDance is based) signals openness to strike a deal with the US that would allow TikTok to remain active there long-term, although it previously said it would block a forced sale of the app. “When it comes to actions such as business management and acquisition, we believe they should be independently decided by companies in accordance with market principles,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning. “If it’s Chinese companies, China’s laws and regulations must be followed.”
During his first administration, Trump sought to ban TikTok in the US. He signed executive orders in this sense, which includes trying to force ByteDance to sell its US business. That didn’t happen at the time. But pressure on TikTok has increased during the Biden administration, with former Pres signing a bill last year who called on ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a US ban.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/trump-delays-tiktok-ban-for-at-least-75-days-via-executive-order-014523110.html? src = rss
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