TMTPOST -- U.S. President-elect Donald Trump reversed his hard-line stance against TikTok in his first presidential term in 2020 as the popular short video application is seeking to block a looming ban in the country in the court.
Credit：Xinhua News Agency
“We’ll take a look at TikTok. You know, I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok,” Trump said Monday at press conference at Mar-a-Lago club in Pam Beach, Forida. “TikTok had an impact, so we’re taking a look at it.” Trump attributed Republican gains with young voters to TikTok and signaled his openness to stop the social media platform.
Later Monday, NBC News reported Trump met with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew at Mar-a-Lago. TikTok the same day took its case to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the court to first consider its appeal of a law that could ban the app by January 19 if its Chinese owner ByteDance Ltd. doesn’t sell it by the deadline.
TikTok the same day requested the Supreme Court to review the recent ruling of an appeals court that upheld an act threatening a U.S. ban. “The Act will shutter one of America’s most popular speech platforms the day before a presidential inauguration,” TikTok said a filing said. “This, in turn, will silence the speech of Applicants and the many Americans who use the platform to communicate about politics, commerce, arts, and other matters of public concern.”
TikTok said in a statement it is asking the Supreme Court to apply the most “apply the most rigorous scrutiny to speech bans and conclude that it violates the First Amendment.” If the ban is imposed, small businesses that use the app will lose more than $1 billion in revenue and creators will lose nearly $300 million in earnings in one month, TikTok warned.
The U.S. Congress has passed a bill and U.S. President Joe Biden signed into law that could ban TikTok in the country in April. The Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act ( the “Act”) is part of a comprehensive foreign aid package providing assistance to Israel, Ukraine and other U.S allies. It gives TikTok owner ByteDance 270 days to divest its U.S. assets including TikTok, otherwise the Chinese tech giant would face a ban on its app being available in U.S. app stores or on U.S. web hosting services. It also grants the White House the authority to prolong this deadline by another 90 days if the president deems that progress has been made towards a sale.
Trump was reported last month to seek blocking the U.S. ban. If TikTok owner ByteDance doesn’t meet the deadline required by the Act, Trump could work on options to delay or even cancel the ban. One option Trump can adopt would be to leverage his administration’s authority to extend the deadline by 90 days if there is “significant progress” towards a sale, The Washington Post reported. It added that legal experts have suggested Trump could also encourage Congress to repeal the legislation altogether or influence his attorney general not to enforce it.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on last Friday ruled against TikTok’s request last week for pause of the ban that set a deadline of January 19 for a sale of ByteDance.TikTok’s recent request to pause the U.S. ban was deemed as efforts to win time for Trump’s incoming administration to weigh in the relevant federal law. In a court filing related to the request earlier this month, TikTok has warned that a ban on its platform in the United States could result in a $1.3 billion loss in revenue and earnings for small businesses and social media creators within just one month. “These losses would grow significantly if the shutdown lasts beyond one month,” noted Blake Chandlee, TikTok’s president of global business solutions, in the filing.
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