President-elect Donald Trump is expected to try to halt a potential U.S. ban of TikTok next year, after he promised on the campaign trail to save the popular social media app if he won, according to people familiar with his views on the matter.
The video-sharing app faces a January deadline to find a new owner not based in China or lose access to U.S. users, under a law passed in April with bipartisan support.
“He appreciates the breadth and reach of TikTok, which he used masterfully along with podcasts and new media entrants to win,” said Kellyanne Conway, who ran Trump’s first presidential campaign, served in the White House and remains close to him and now also advocates for TikTok. “There are many ways to hold China to account outside alienating 180 million U.S. users each month. Trump recognized early on that Democrats are the party of bans – gas-powered cars, menthol cigarettes, vapes, plastic straws and TikTok – and to let them own that draconian, anti-personal choice space.”
The president-elect has not yet announced a decision on if, or how to proceed, but some advisers expect him to intervene on TikTok’s behalf if necessary – including Conway and three others, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. Trump promised during the campaign to protect the app even though he also signed an executive order in his first term that would have effectively banned it: “I’m gonna save TikTok,” he said in one of his first videos on the app this June.
The deadline in the law for TikTok’s China-based owner ByteDance to divest is Jan. 19 – the day before Trump’s inauguration. But the firm has challenged the ban as unconstitutional, and even if TikTok doesn’t win, the litigation could push the question into Trump’s second term, giving him more latitude.
The law, called the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, grants the president the power to extend the divestment deadline by 90 days if the administration sees that “significant progress” has been made toward a sale. If the deadline comes after Trump takes office and he wanted to halt the ban outright, Trump could push Congress to repeal the law or encourage his attorney general to refrain from enforcing it, according to Alan Rozenshtein, a former national-security adviser to the Justice Department.
If Trump does try to halt the ban, it would amount to a significant policy shift for an incoming president who has spared almost no opportunity to attack China. Toward the end of his first term, Trump presided over a federal investigation into ByteDance that also sought to orchestrate TikTok’s sale.
The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment. TikTok declined to comment.
ByteDance recognized months ago that a Trump victory was its best chance to retain control of TikTok, said one person familiar with the firm’s internal discussions, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private talks.
“The outcome of the election puts him in an even better place than he was already trending. And that’s what the company is hoping for,” the person said.
Halting the ban without formal action might be tricky, Rozenshtein said. The law is enforced against app stores offered by tech giants including Apple and Google – subjecting them to fines if they continue to offer TikTok – and those internet giants may be leery of disobeying a law based on the whims of an inconsistent president.
“If you’re the general counsel of Apple and [chief executive] Tim Cook turns to you and says, ‘Can we host TikTok on our app stores,’ you’re in a very awkward position if the answer is ‘Trump said we could’ in a random tweet,” Rozenshtein said. “How much do you trust Trump? If he changes his mind, are they retroactively liable? Do they really want to be in that position?”
Repealing the law outright would leave TikTok under ByteDance’s ownership and could reignite concerns in Washington, including among top Republicans, over China’s potential influence on the app. But ByteDance in 2022 offered the Biden administration an extensive proposal, known as Project Texas, that would grant the U.S. government enormous sway over its workforce and technical underpinnings in exchange for continued operation in the United States, which the administration declined.
ByteDance has previously said the proposal is still on the table, and the Trump administration could agree to it as part of a potential compromise.
On Capitol Hill, lawmakers in both parties continue to argue that TikTok represents a national-security threat to Americans. They fear its popularity could open the door for the Chinese government to collect U.S. users’ data and manipulate the videos that Americans see in their feeds – a charge that TikTok strenuously denies.
Trump’s early picks for national security posts in his second term include China hawks who have supported the TikTok ban. His choice for secretary of state, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida), wrote in The Washington Post in 2022 that TikTok gave the Chinese government “a unique ability to monitor” American teens and that “we must ban this potential spyware before it is too late.” Trump’s pick for secretary of homeland security, South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem (R), was the first governor to order TikTok banned on state-owned devices.
In a statement, Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Michigan), who heads the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, defended the law as affording the Trump administration “a unique opportunity to broker an American takeover of the platform.”
Trump shared some of the same concerns as the hawks have during his first term in office, even signing an executive order in 2020 that declared TikTok a “national emergency” – and warned it could enable China “to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.” His administration even tried to foster a last-minute sale of TikTok in a process led by then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, but it never came to fruition – and Mnuchin later declared his interest in acquiring pieces of the company.
But Trump has tempered his views in recent months, breaking with his party as he emerges as one of the app’s biggest defenders on the right. The incoming president has argued that a ban would only help TikTok’s social media rival, Facebook, which he has said “cheated in the [2020] Election” and is a “true Enemy of the People.”
After debating whether Trump should join TikTok this spring, his campaign ultimately staffed a small TikTok team to help play him up as “the biggest celebrity entertainer … on the planet.” By the time he declared victory, the incoming president had amassed more than 14 million followers on the app.
“For all of those who want to save TikTok in America, vote for Trump. The other side is closing it up, but I’m now a big star on TikTok,” he said in a video monologue this September posted on his own social media site, Truth Social.
Trump has told allies that he is impressed by his popularity on TikTok and recognized it to be a major political asset over the summer, according to two people familiar with his attitude toward the app. Others have told Trump that the national security establishment “unfairly targeted” TikTok with allegations of Chinese state influence, one person involved with those conversations said, adding that the message appeared to personally resonate with Trump because it mirrors Trump’s own views about investigations into his personal and business activities.
Support for a TikTok ban has crumbled in the United States, including among Republicans, falling from 50 percent last year to 32 percent this summer, the Pew Research Center said in September.
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Tony Romm contributed to this report.
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