Trump Pauses TikTok Ban, Offers Immunity to Tech Firms

President Trump signed an executive order on Monday pausing the implementation of a law banning TikTok and shielding companies that work with the popular video app from liability, as reported by NPR. The order, which will freeze the law for 75 days, aims to allow the 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. "We may have to get approval from China. I'm not sure. I'm sure they'll approve."

Trump's action comes in response to a law that took effect on Sunday, making it a crime for companies to support TikTok while the service remains under the control of ByteDance, a Beijing-based technology company. Lawmakers from both parties, who passed the law in April, fear TikTok could cooperate with the Chinese government for spying or data collection.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court ruled that TikTok's "well-supported" national security concerns justify a forced sale. If TikTok remained owned by ByteDance, the crackdown on the app would have begun on January 19th.

In response to the impending ban, firms providing web hosting and cloud infrastructure to TikTok, including Oracle and Akamai, dropped the video app. Google and Apple removed TikTok from their app stores, and TikTok itself took the drastic step of shutting down its servers, rendering the app inaccessible to millions of Americans for approximately 14 hours.

However, the service was restored on Sunday morning after Trump, then president-elect, wrote on Truth Social that he planned to take executive action to delay the ban's start date and protect TikTok's business partners once he assumed office.

While Trump's executive action attempts to clarify the legal landscape for TikTok, legal experts argue that extending the law's start date and offering liability protection does not negate the existing statute.

"Those actions do not stop the law from being in effect. And it does not stop, let's say, Oracle, from violating the law — which, as far as I can tell, it is doing right now," said Alan Rozenshtein, a constitutional scholar at the University of Minnesota Law School, to NPR.

The law allows one exception: TikTok can continue to operate if Trump certifies to Congress that "significant progress" has been made toward TikTok becoming independent from ByteDance's ownership. This requirement necessitates legally binding agreements outlining ownership changes.

Rozenshtein suggests that if Trump falsely certifies these agreements to Congress in order to extend the legal start date of the ban, "that would effectively mean one of his first acts as president would be lying to Congress."

Some legal experts anticipate Trump's executive action to be challenged in court by a tech company seeking a "declaratory judgment" to clarify the legal ambiguity. They believe Apple and Google are concerned about potential shareholder lawsuits stemming from the potential market value losses associated with violating a federal statute.

Despite Trump's action, Apple and Google have yet to reinstate TikTok on their app stores, citing the illegality of supporting a ByteDance-owned TikTok under the existing law.