TikTok restores service after Trump vows to extend deadline

Alexandra S. Levine and Justin Sink, Bloomberg News on Jan 19, 2025

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TikTok started restoring service in the U.S. on Sunday, after a whipsaw of events that saw the video app make good on a threat to go dark, only to have President-elect Donald Trump halt enforcement of the law and announce he would give its owners another three months to find a buyer.

“We thank President Trump for providing the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties providing TikTok to over 170 million Americans and allowing over 7 million small businesses to thrive,” the video platform said in a post on X.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday unanimously upheld the bipartisan law signed in April that required Chinese parent company ByteDance Ltd. to sell the wildly popular video app and required tech companies that host or distribute TikTok in the US – such as Apple Inc., Google and Oracle Corp. – to stop doing so on Jan. 19. The law was designed to address national security concerns.

Trump backed the law earlier this year, but reversed course after he suggested TikTok helped him reach young voters and ultimately win the election.

Trump said Sunday in a social media post he would issue an executive order on Monday “to extend the period of time before the law’s prohibitions take effect, so that we can make a deal to protect our national security.”

Trump, who will be sworn in at noon Monday, said he would seek a joint venture under which new, U.S.-based owners would purchase 50% of the company and “keep it in good hands and allow it to stay up.”

After the high court ruling, TikTok said that without guidance from the Biden administration, it would “go dark” on Sunday, a warning dismissed by White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre as a “stunt.”

But the app did stop working in the U.S. late Saturday until it started working again shortly after Trump’s announcement. The CEO of TikTok, Shou Chew, is expected to attend Trump’s inaugural ceremony.

Trump’s team has been searching for a way to satisfy the legal requirement that prohibits the hosting of a “foreign adversary controlled application,” and the joint venture structure may satisfy both the legal requirements and Chinese officials, who so far have strongly preferred the company to stay under ByteDance’s control.

Incoming national security adviser Mike Waltz said on CBS’s "Face the Nation" that Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping agreed to “work together” to save the app.

Key Republicans in Congress said a 50% U.S. ownership would violate the law.

“There needs to be a sale, a full divestiture, from the Chinese Communist Party,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said on NBC’s "Meet the Press." Senate intelligence chair Tom Cotton also said in a social media post that there “was no legal basis for any kind of ‘extension’” of the law’s effective date.

TikTok has previously tried to use its popularity to change its fate. The company urged TikTokers to call Congress to protest the bill and try to prevent it from passing when it was first introduced. The strategy backfired at the time, stoking lawmakers’ fears about the app’s influence over US users.

Even before TikTok made the app unavailable, loyal creators were organizing online to pressure Trump to follow through on pledges he made on the campaign trail to be TikTok’s savior.

“This is a promise Trump made and it is a promise he used to get a large number of young people to vote for him,” TikTok influencer Tiffany Cianci told Bloomberg ahead of the company’s recent appearance before the Supreme Court. “We are calling on him to deliver immediately.”

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