Trump Raises TikTok’s Hopes for a Rescue in the United States
The New York Times
When asked about whether President-elect Donald Trump would prevent a TikTok ban in the United States, a spokeswoman told The New York Times: “He will deliver.”
TikTok, the Chinese-owned video app set to be banned in the United States in two and a half months, is hoping that President-elect Donald J. Trump will find a way to rescue it after a smattering of promises to that effect on the campaign trail this year.
Mr. Trump’s team says he will “deliver” on those promises — though the details are hazy.
“The American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin, giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail,” Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance’s transition team, said in a statement. “He will deliver.”
Mr. Trump’s support for TikTok would be a stunning reversal from 2020, when he tried to block the app in the United States and force its sale to American companies because of its ownership by ByteDance, the Chinese tech giant.
A federal law signed in April says TikTok, which has 170 million U.S. users, must be sold to a non-Chinese company by Jan. 19 — a day before Mr. Trump’s inauguration — or face a ban in the United States.
The company has challenged the law in courts in something of a Hail Mary, saying that a sale is impossible, partly because of restrictions from the Chinese government, and that a subsequent ban would violate the First Amendment.
