AGENCY
Washington, Jan 21
Hours after his inauguration on Monday (Jan 20), President Donald Trump signed an executive order to delay the ban of the popular short-video application TikTok by 75 days. The platform was slated to be shut on January 19.
Trump signed the order among several other orders on his first day in office.
The extension has been given to the app to comply with a law that requires it to be sold by its Chinese owner ByteDance to non-Chinese buyers on national security grounds. US officials believe a possible risk of data of Americans being misused under the ownership of ByteDance.
The short video app, which is used by 170 million Americans, was briefly offline for US users on Saturday (Jan 18) to prevent the ban. TikTok restored its services on Sunday (Jan 19), thanking Trump for providing assurance that they would not face penalties to keep the app running.
The order signed by Trump directs the attorney general to not enforce the law “to permit my administration an opportunity to determine the appropriate course of action with respect to TikTok,” according to news agency Reuters.
The order states that the Justice Department must issue letters to companies supplying services to TikTok including Apple, Alphabet’s Google and Oracle, stating that “there has been no violation of the statute and that there is no liability for any conduct that occurred during the above-specified period.”
“Frankly, we have no choice. We have to save it,” Trump said at a rally on Sunday (Jan 19) before his inauguration. He added that the US will seek a joint venture with the Chinese app to prevent its ban in the country.
The debate over the operations of the application comes amid heightened tensions between the US and China. Trump earlier said that he intends to put tariffs on China, although he also suggested that he hopes to have more direct contact with China’s leader.
The law banning the app was upheld by the Supreme Court on Friday (Jan 17) and went into effect on Sunday (Jan 19). Trump had earlier supported the ban on the platform during his first presidential term.
TikTok chief executive Shou Zi Chew was present during the inauguration ceremony of Trump on Monday (Jan 20) along with other tech moguls including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg.
