President Trump signed an executive order on Monday seeking to hit pause on a law banning TikTok and to provide a liability shield to business partners of the popular video app, NPR reported.
According to the order, the law will be paused for 75 days and companies that work with TikTok will not be liable for doing so.
The text of the order said this will give Trump’s administration time “to pursue a resolution that protects national security while saving a platform used by 170 million Americans.”
“Essentially with TikTok I have the right to sell it or close it,” Trump said from the Oval Office after signing the executive action on Monday. “We may have to get approval from China. I’m not sure. I’m sure they’ll approve.”
Trump said his administration will work on “a joint venture” between the United States and undisclosed other entities.
Trump’s action is tied to a TikTok law that took effect Sunday makes it a crime — punishable with stiff fines — for companies to support TikTok as long as the service is controlled by ByteDance, a Bejing-based tech company. Lawmakers from both parties, who passed the law in April, fear TikTok could cooperate with the Chinese government to use the app for spying or nefarious data collection.
Reuters reported: U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order to restore access to TikTok has created a thicket of new legal questions for the short-video platform, along with new tensions between the White House, members of Congress who want the platform banned, and tech companies caught in the middle.
Legal experts said despite Trump’s order, service providers and app distributors like Google and Apple still face major uncertainty and potential massive financial liability for defying a law that banned TikTok in the United States unless Chinese parent ByteDance divested the company by Jan. 19.
TikTok remained unavailable to download on Apple and Android devices in the United States early Tuesday afternoon, after Trump signed an executive order on Monday seeking to pause the U.S. ban as one of his first acts as president.
BBC reported: President Trump has signed an executive order granting TikTok a 75-day extension to comply with a law that requires a sale or ban of the platform.
He says during that time, the US will not enforce the law passed by Congress last year and signed by former President Joe Biden.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, he said: “I tell you what. Every rich person has called me about TikTok.”
When asked by a reporter why he’s had a change of heart since trying to ban TikTok in 2020, Trump responded: “Because I got to use it.”
In my opinion, people who were previously using TikTok might have a sigh of relief now that they know their favorite app will return.