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President-elect Trump's consistent support for TikTok has fueled speculation about how he might prevent the app's looming US ban, although a clear resolution remains elusive.
"We got to keep this sucker around for a little while," Trump told supporters on Sunday, just days after meeting with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew in Florida. Trump, who credits the wildly popular platform with delivering him a large young user base, opposes banning TikTok partly because he believes it would primarily benefit Meta, the Mark Zuckerberg-led company behind Instagram and Facebook.
Congress overwhelmingly passed legislation, signed by President Joe Biden in April, that would block TikTok from US app stores and web hosting services unless Beijing-based ByteDance sells its stake by January 19.
US officials and lawmakers grew wary of the potential for the Chinese government to influence ByteDance or access the data of TikTok's American users.
Even with Trump's decisive election victory and incoming Republican-led Congress, acquiescing to the president-elect's desire and preventing the ban faces significant hurdles.
The law enjoyed rare bipartisan support in a divided Washington, making its outright repeal through a vote in Congress politically unlikely even with Trump's influence over Republicans. The Supreme Court may offer the clearest path forward.
TikTok has appealed to the nation's highest court, arguing the law violates First Amendment rights to free speech. The court, which is dominated by Trump-aligned conservatives, will hear the case on January 10, just nine days before the ban takes effect. This follows a lower appeals court's unanimous decision to uphold the law in December.
This isn't the first attempt to resolve TikTok's US status. In 2020, Trump also threatened a ban unless ByteDance sold its US operations. While Oracle and Walmart reached a preliminary agreement with ByteDance for ownership stakes, legal challenges and the transition to the Biden administration prevented the deal's completion.
