Today, Monday, his first day back in office, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to postpone the ban on the TikTok application in the country for 75 days. But whether this move is legal remains to be seen.
The ban — signed by the Biden administration and upheld by the Supreme Court — gave Chinese parent ByteDance until Sunday to sell its stake in the popular social media platform or be banned in the United States.
Lawmakers from both parties have claimed that the Chinese government could use TikTok to spy on American citizens.
But there are few signs that Trump has the ability to skirt the law.
“Executive orders cannot overturn existing laws,” said Sarah Krebs, director of the Technology Policy Institute at Cornell University.
The law includes a provision that allows for a 90-day extension if there is progress toward a sale before its effective date. The app disappeared in the United States on Saturday evening, but was restored the next day, with a message to American users that the company was working with the Trump administration to find a solution.
Chinese social media app RedNote has been thrust into the spotlight after more than half a million TikTok users recently joined the platform in protest against the short-form video app’s potential impending ban in the United States, which is set to take effect on Sunday. RedNote can “monitor or exploit users,” says technologist Jason Snyder, adding that the real danger comes from its “ability to control narratives.”
Krebs says it is uncertain that this provision can be applied retroactively, given that the law was already in effect when Trump signed his order.
“It is not clear whether the new president has the authority to issue a 90-day extension of the law that has already taken effect,” she added.
She also suspects there are conditions for a delay at this point – without even naming a potential buyer to prove that the sale is moving forward. Various media reports have questioned whether Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk will buy the platform, or whether Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta is interested.
Trump who was He earlier opposed the existence of TikTok In the US, he told reporters that he changed his mind once he used the app himself.
Meanwhile, TikTok continued business as usual in Canada and elsewhere.
First Amendment issue
The Supreme Court treated the TikTok ban as a First Amendment issue, and whether the law violated TikTok’s or its users’ right to free speech, says Anupam Chander, a law professor at Georgetown University.
The court “is not judging the merits of the law. It is not judging the timeline of the law. It is simply saying, Did Congress have the authority to pass this law?” He told CBC News.
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Ultimately, it deemed the law constitutional, citing Congressional concerns about the app’s data collection.
Chander, an expert on regulating new technologies, says Trump’s delay of the ban could be challenged in court, but adds: “It is not clear who would have standing in US courts to make that challenge.”
He says this is an example of the “danger” posed by executive orders.
“If you can say, ‘Hey newspaper, you’re leaving, and I can decide your fate in this country,’ that makes the newspaper very obedient, to say the least.”
That was part of the argument made by the Supreme Court – in a separate, broader case about social media platforms – In July, When Florida and Texas argued that the government should limit how those platforms regulate content posted by their users.
The court issued an opinion saying that platforms — like newspapers — should be protected from government interference in deciding what to include or exclude in virtual space.
US Representative Frank Pallone, Democrat of New Jersey, It was suggested Trump’s move was illegal, saying the newly sworn-in president was “circumventing national security legislation passed by an overwhelming bipartisan majority in Congress.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, did not comment on the legality of Trump’s move but said he expected the full sale to be completed.
But Trump may have other plans, as he suggested to reporters on Monday that the government could strike a deal with ByteDance to buy a 50 percent stake in TikTok. Whether Beijing, which has been protecting TikTok in the face of US threats, will embrace the idea is another potential hurdle.
However, the Chinese vice president met with US Vice President J.D. Vance and Musk on Monday after attending Trump’s inauguration, where TikTok CEO Qiu Shuzei was also present.
If the sale goes through, the partially U.S.-owned version of TikTok would likely be cut off from the rest of the world, according to Chander — unlike Chinese social media platform Douyin, a TikTok-like sister app that only operates in China. For Chinese market only.
Chander says these may not be beneficial for the United States.
Douyin only operates in China because it is a “very tightly controlled environment,” he said. “This is not what we usually do in the United States.”
He added, “Canadians will stop talking to the rest of the world and Americans will stop talking to ourselves. This is not a good look for the United States and is not helpful to the rest of the world.”
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