Trump has said he desires to “save” TikTok. For this to occur, it might should be banned first.
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As TikTok filed a petition with the Supreme Court today to remain a law that might take the app offline as early as January 19, CEO Shou Zi Chew met with President-elect Donald Trump to make his case. But it could actually help Trump politically that the ban goes into effect.
The law, passed in April, gave TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance 270 days to sell the app to a non-Chinese company or it could be banned within the United States. However, ByteDance didn’t attempt to sell TikTok. Instead, it challenged the law in court, insisting that it violated the First Amendment rights of TikTok and its users. But in an unusual interpretation of First Amendment law, the powerful D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled earlier this month that the law was constitutional and truly crucial to guard Americans’ right to free speech. It also rejected a request from TikTok to dam the law from taking effect before Trump takes office. ByteDance has now asked the Supreme Court to suspend the law, arguing that even a brief shutdown of TikTok would disrupt billions of dollars’ value of promoting deals, scare off potential business partners and hasten creators’ departure from the platform.
The Supreme Court could issue the injunction as a favor to Trump, who might even attempt to intervene within the case on TikTok’s behalf. But Trump could do it want TikTok is about to be banned on Joe Biden’s last day in office. If that happened, he could possibly be his hero.
Trump made a promise to “save” TikTok, which the law doesn’t actually allow him to maintain. The only authority he could have is the authority to grant ByteDance a one-time three-month extension to permit the sale of TikTok to a non-Chinese company, which ByteDance says it’s going to not do. But if TikTok goes down on Jan. 19, Trump can blame outgoing President Biden after which bring the app back online with the one-time extension just hours after he takes office. The optics will likely be flawless – and Trump is all in regards to the optics. He could have fulfilled his campaign promise, and if ByteDance continues to be unsold three months later, that will likely be their fault, not his.
This realpolitik move would put ByteDance in a difficult position. A 3-month extension can be welcome, but ByteDance has said it’s going to not be sold. What it really wants is to give you the option to proceed operating TikTok itself — and an extension would give the corporate time to persuade Trump that something aside from a full divestiture is sufficient.
But Trump’s authority is restricted there too. The text of the bill specifically prohibits Trump from signing an agreement to handle national security concerns, resembling the restrictions on data sharing and algorithm testing that ByteDance has already proposed with Project Texas. The law states that any sale of TikTok shouldn’t be sufficient whether it is “established.”[s] or maintain[s ] any operational relationship” between the brand new TikTok and “any formerly affiliated companies controlled by a foreign adversary,” i.e. ByteDance, “including any collaboration referring to the operation of a content advice algorithm or any agreement referring to data sharing. “
Trump could, in fact, attempt to say that the Texas project is suitable anyway – he has actually flouted laws before. But on this case, a legally questionable certification is unlikely to have any significance. The law says American corporations like Google, Apple, Oracle and Amazon face huge fines in the event that they illegally help keep TikTok online. Under these circumstances, a mere Truth Social post and even an executive order will not be enough to persuade American corporations to bring the app back online. If Trump tries to take TikTok a step outside the legal bounds, American corporations could ask the courts to weigh in (back) – to make sure they do not face billions in fines for trusting a person who has a proven history of altering his rights Spirit.
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