After Sunday, it didn't take long for President Donald Trump to reactivate TikTok operations in the US. Additionally, he also did a couple of executive orders, which included temporarily pausing the ban on TikTok.
According to the executive order, TikTok has been granted an extra 75 days from the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. With this, TikTok now has more than two months to reach an agreement. Trump also said the unfortunate timing of the law interfered with his "ability to assess the national security and foreign policy implications of the Act's prohibitions" before taking effect.
President Trump will also review "sensitive intelligence" about the national security concerns that were brought up by critics and "evaluate the sufficiency of mitigation measures TikTok has taken to date." TikTok tried to cooperate with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to move US user data to servers hosted by Oracle, but discussions were halted last year.
In regards to the sale of TikTok, President Trump also proposed a 50% acquisition of TikTok in the US through a local company. While nothing has been decided yet, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of China, Mao Ning said the potential sale must be “decided independently by companies based on market principles.” She also hopes US officials “listen carefully to rational voices and provide an open, fair, just and non-discriminatory business environment for market entities from all countries to operate in the United States.”
For now, the US telco services are allowing Americans to access TikTok again. President Trump assured there will be "no liability for any company that helped keep TikTok from going dark before my order." However, the app is still not available in the app stores. At the time of this post, other ByteDance-related apps such as CapCut, Marvel Snap and others are still banned in the US.
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