Trump signs executive order to pause TikTok ban, provide immunity to tech firms : NPR

President Trump signed an executive order on Monday seeking to temporarily halt a law banning TikTok and provide a liability shield to the popular video app’s business partners.

according to orderThe law will be paused for 75 days and companies that work with TikTok will not be responsible for doing so.

The text of the order stated that this would give the Trump administration time “to pursue a decision that protects national security while saving a platform used by 170 million Americans.”

“Basically with TikTok, I have the right to sell it or shut it down,” Trump said from the Oval Office after signing the executive action on Monday. “We may have to get approval from China. I’m not sure. I’m sure they will agree.”

Trump said that his administration would work on a “joint project” between the United States and other undisclosed entities.

“I think you have a lot of people interested,” Trump said.

Trump’s action is tied to a TikTok law that took effect Sunday, making it a crime for companies to support TikTok — punishable by stiff fines — as long as the service is controlled by ByteDance, a Beijing-based technology company. Lawmakers from both parties, who Pass the law In April, there were concerns that TikTok was collaborating with the Chinese government to use the app for spying or nefarious data collection.

Earlier this month, The Supreme Court ruled The app’s “well-supported” national security concerns justify a forced sale — and if TikTok remains owned by ByteDance, the crackdown on TikTok will begin on January 19.

In response, on the eve of that date, companies providing web hosting and cloud infrastructure for TikTok, including Oracle and Akamai, ditched the video app. Google and Apple have removed TikTok from their app stores. TikTok has also made a dramatic move Shut down its serversWhich made millions of Americans dark for about 14 hours.

But the service was It was recovered Sunday morningDonald Trump, who at the time was still president-elect, wrote on Truth Social that he intended to take executive action to postpone the start date of the ban and provide legal cover to TikTok’s business partners once he entered the White House.

Businesses reacted differently to Trump’s social media post. TikTok restarted its servers again and sent a notification to all users who credit Trump for TikTok’s comeback. Oracle and Akamai have restored support for the web.

But Apple and Google are still standing. This is because, under the law, returning ByteDance-owned TikTok to app stores would be illegal and expose it to potential billions of dollars in fines. Legal experts say Trump’s executive action doesn’t change that much.

Apple, Google, Oracle and Akamai did not respond to requests for comment.

While Trump’s executive action Attempts Monday to clarify TikTok’s legal landscape Constitutional scholar Alan Rosenstein of the University of Minnesota Law School said trying to extend the law’s start date and insulate companies from liability does not change an act of Congress.

“These actions do not prevent the law from taking effect. They do not prevent, let’s say, Oracle from violating the law — which it is doing now, to my knowledge,” Rosenstein said.

The law allows one exception: TikTok can continue to operate if Trump certifies to Congress that “substantial progress” has been made toward separating TikTok from ByteDance ownership.

The law requires that Trump show Congress that there are legally binding agreements in place regarding ownership changes at TikTok.

If Trump told Congress that these things happened, when they didn’t, in order to extend the legal start date for the ban, “that would effectively mean that one of his first acts as president would be to lie to Congress,” Rosenstein said.

Some legal experts expect Trump’s executive action to be challenged in court by a technology company to obtain a “declaratory judgment,” a ruling to clear up the muddy legal picture. They believe Apple and Google are concerned about potential shareholder lawsuits over the market value big tech companies could take if they break a federal law.

However, an important aspect of the TikTok ban law is that its interpretation and implementation is up to the White House — even if that means, technically, not following the law’s requirements.

“The law gives an extraordinary amount of power to the office of the president,” said Ryan Callow, a University of Washington law professor who specializes in technology policy.

However, Rosenstein argues that any legal shield Trump promises via executive action would not hold up in court.

He added: “This is not a power that the president has, and he cannot want it to exist by simply saying something and calling it an executive order.”

There’s another risk that Apple, Google, Oracle and other companies that back TikTok face: the possibility that Trump could later turn against the video app and then try to use the law to retaliate.

“The minute Trump withdraws his support — if he does — that’s when TikTok disappears,” Callow said. “This is why everyone is fawning over Donald Trump.”