President-elect Donald Trump has said he will restore access to TikTok in the United States as soon as he takes office on January 20. However, he wants the social network to be at least half-owned by American investors.
He wrote about this on his social network Truth Social.
TikTok shut down its 170 million American users late on January 18, hours before a law banning it in the United States on national security grounds took effect on January 19. The Chinese government could demand data on users in the United States from TikTokʼs Chinese parent company, ByteDance.
Donald Trump said he would delay the TikTok ban for 90 days after he takes office to have time to "make a deal to protect our national security".
"I would like the United States to have 50% ownership in the joint venture. By doing so, we save TikTok, keep it in safe hands, and let it speak," he wrote.
TikTok ban in the US
The US House of Representatives 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 took effect on January 19. Trump has promised to delay the law for 90 days, and he can only do so once. The US president-elect tried to ban TikTok during his first term, but reversed course during this yearʼs presidential campaign and promised to "save" the app.
He explained this by wanting to maintain “competition” with Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, which he criticized for allegedly censoring right-wing voices. The latter said on January 7 that Meta would work with Trump “to confront governments around the world that are persecuting American companies and increasing censorship”.
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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