TikTok CEO Shaw Ji-chu will attend the inauguration of the US President-elect Donald Trump. His national security adviser Mike Waltz says Trump will try to “save” TikTok.
This is reported by Axios, citing sources.
The news of Shaw Ji Chuʼs invitation came three days before TikTok was banned in the US (which will happen on January 19, the day before Trumpʼs inauguration). The Trump inauguration committee itself sent Shaw Ji Chu an invitation. The latter is to sit next to Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos.
It is still unclear what exactly Donald Trump plans to do to "save" TikTok from a ban in the US if its Chinese parent company ByteDance does not sell it to the American company.
"Weʼre going to find a way to keep it but protect peopleʼs data," Mike Waltz said.
He added that the Trump team may prepare "executive orders" that would allow TikTok to continue operating in the country, but with certain conditions, including protecting Americansʼ data.
However, Alan Rosenstein, a law professor at the University of Minnesota and former national security adviser to the Justice Department, noted that executive orders “are not magic documents” that would stop the ban from taking effect.
“TikTok will still be banned, and it will still be illegal for Apple and Google to do business with them,” he stressed.
TikTok ban in the US
The US House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill in March 2024 that could ban the social network TikTok in the US. The bill was supported by the US Senate in April, and President Joe Biden signed the bill into law that same month.
The law is set to take effect on January 19, 2025, with the possibility of a one-time 90-day delay granted by the president if the sale of the social network is not completed by then.
The US lawmakers say TikTok is a national security threat because the Chinese government could force ByteDance to hand over data on the US users. The bill would require US-based TikTok to divest itself of its Chinese owner ByteDance or face a ban.
US President-elect Donald Trump tried to ban TikTok during his first term, but reversed course during this year’s presidential campaign and vowed to “save” the app. He said he wanted to “compete” with Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, which he has criticized for allegedly censoring right-wing voices. On January 7, he said Meta would work with President-elect Donald Trump “to stand up to governments around the world that are harassing American companies and increasing censorship”. On the same day, he announced that political content would return to Facebook and Instagram, and that Meta would abandon fact-checking and switch to a Community Notes model.
- According to Bloomberg, China is considering selling its American unit TikTok to Elon Musk. However, ByteDance representatives called the Bloomberg report “pure fiction”.
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