Donald Trump is considering suspending a TikTok ban in the US with an executive order when he enters the White House on 20 January, according to a report.
The president-elect is exploring an executive order that would postpone enforcement of a sale-or-ban law due to come into force on 19 January, said the Washington Post. The report added, however, that Trump’s legal grounds for suspending a law passed by Congress are questionable.
Under the terms of the law, the short video app’s US operation must be sold by its Chinese owners by Sunday. If a sale does not occur, new users will not be able to download TikTok from app stores.
However, TikTok is preparing to shut off the app from US users completely on Sunday unless the supreme court intervenes to block the law, according to the tech news site the Information.
Citing unnamed sources familiar with the deliberations, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday that Trump and his team are considering an executive order that would suspend enforcement of the law for 60 to 90 days. The supreme court is also due to rule on whether the law should be allowed to proceed, although a hearing last week indicated it is unlikely to stand in the way of the legislation.
Trump said last month that “I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok” and has asked the supreme court to pause implementing the law so he can pursue a “political resolution” once he is in office. Congress has voted to ban the app, which is owned by the Beijing-based ByteDance, over concerns that the Chinese state could access data from its 170 million US users.
“TikTok itself is a fantastic platform,” Trump’s incoming national security adviser, Mike Waltz, told Fox News on Wednesday. “We’re going to find a way to preserve it but protect people’s data.”
The New York Times has also reported that TikTok’s chief executive, Shou Zi Chew, has been invited to Trump’s inauguration and will sit in “a position of honour”.
NBC, the US broadcaster, has reported that the Biden administration has been weighing options to keep the social media platform open beyond Sunday, in an attempt to defer the decision to Trump.
“Americans shouldn’t expect to see TikTok suddenly banned on Sunday,” an administration official told NBC.
