Donald Trump voted against TikTok before he voted for it.
It looks like the president-elect will be very inconsistent in his views on whether to stop the social networking site. This could be a sign of what many experts think will be a rough time for regulations in the new administration.
Right now, it’s not clear what will happen with TikTok in the U.S. With strong backing from both parties, Congress passed a law earlier this year telling ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns the platform, that it had to sell its U.S. business by January 19, the day before Trump’s inauguration, or it would be shut down.
The issue is not made clear by Trump’s changing views on the platform. Most recently, he said he is against the ban. From the way he is handling the situation, it looks like his second time in office will not be a sure thing when it comes to rules and policies. That could have big effects on businesses that need some oversight from regulators to run, as well as on the owners and customers who are affected by those businesses’ choices.
“We’re in for some very unpredictable times.”
Matt Wood, general counsel of watchdog group Free Press
The vice president of policy and general counsel for Free Press, Matt Wood, said, “Welcome to Trump 2.0.” Free Press is a neutral media and technology watchdog that is against banning TikTok. “During the first term, we saw that Trump will sometimes disagree with his own point of view, even within days.” “I think we’re in for some very strange times.”
During his first term in office, Trump pushed hard for a ban on TikTok. He even signed an order for the platform to be sold or shut down, but a court finally overturned it. Since then, Trump has changed his mind. He now says that he wants to “save” the company while he is campaigning.
It’s not clear what “saving TikTok” means or how Trump could do it. To people who asked what Trump plans to do about TikTok, his spokesperson said that the president-elect will keep the promises he made during the campaign.
“The American people re-elected President Trump by a huge majority, giving him the power to keep the promises he made during the campaign,” Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “He will save us.”
On the other hand, many of Trump’s picks for important government jobs have been outspoken foes of TikTok.
Supporters of a TikTok ban, Brendan Carr, were chosen by Trump to lead the Federal Communications Commission.
“TikTok poses a serious and unacceptable risk to America’s national security,” Carr wrote in the Project 2025 white paper about what the FCC should be trying to do. This paper has been seen by some as a policy guide for the new Trump administration. “For the sake of national security, a new administration should not allow the application.”
She said Trump “had nothing to do with Project 2025.”
As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida and Trump’s choice for secretary of state, spoke out in favor of a TikTok ban.
Trump’s change of heart
It’s still not clear why the president-elect changed his mind on TikTok.
In his first term, Trump said that TikTok should either be sold by its Chinese owners or be banned in the US because it was dangerous for national security.
In August 2020, Trump even signed an order telling ByteDance that it had to give up its ownership of TikTok or face being banned. TikTok sued, saying that the order was just part of Trump’s plan to boost his chances of re-election by negotiating trade deals with China in a more protectionist way.
They also said that Trump’s move seemed to be a response to his anger over TikTok users who bought tickets to his campaign events but didn’t show up, making it look like he was speaking to an empty room.
There were sales talks between ByteDance and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT 1.00%) and Oracle Corp. (ORCL -0.07%), but no deal was made.
When Trump lost the election that November, the issue stopped being important, and President Joe Biden took back Trump’s order that the ban be put in place.
In March of this year, however, Trump openly changed his mind. He spoke out against a ban at the same time that Congress started debating the bill that would eventually pass by a large majority.
The change happened soon after Trump talked with Jeff Yass, a Republican megadonor who is worth a lot of money and whose company, Susquehanna International Group, has a big stake in ByteDance. Trump has said that he and Yass did not talk about TikTok. A person who is close to Yass said that the two of them only talked about school choice at the meeting. Yass is very interested in this topic. The person said that Yass is a strong libertarian and doesn’t want any kind of communication tool to be censored or banned.
Around the time of the meeting, Trump said on social media that he didn’t want TikTok to be banned because he thought it would be good for Facebook (META -0.70%).
“I don’t want Facebook to do better because they cheated in the last election.” They really are an enemy of the people!” Trump wrote on Truth Social DJT 0.92%.
In the summer, Trump joined TikTok and quickly gained more than 14 million fans.
The law passed by a large majority in Congress, but the idea of a ban has never been very popular with the people. Around the time the bill was passed, TikTok users sent a lot of protests to congressional offices. Free-speech and other interest groups have been strongly against the move.
What will TikTok do next?
In reality, Trump’s view on TikTok being forced to be sold or even banned might not be the last word on the subject. Instead, experts say it should be decided by the courts.
The U.S. government said that TikTok is a threat to national security because it could be used by the Chinese government to spread propaganda or get private information about American people.
As soon as Biden signed the law that Congress passed in April, ByteDance went to court to fight it. In September, TikTok went to court of appeals in Washington, D.C., and said that the rule would violate the First Amendment rights of the 170 million American users of the app.
The judges on the panel didn’t seem to buy the case that free speech was more important than national security, but they haven’t made a decision yet because TikTok has to sell its U.S. platform to a good buyer by January 19.
Jennifer Huddleston, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, which is against the ban, said, “The court’s decision may give us better clues about how this might go than anything said on the campaign trail.” “It is expected that whoever loses this round will take their case to the Supreme Court.”
That means the sale date of January 19 will probably have to be pushed back until the case is fully resolved in court, Huddleston said.
That could give Trump time to think of another way to move forward. Legal experts say that Trump could tell the Justice Department not to enforce a ban, but only if he can get Congress to overturn a law that got a lot of support in the first place.
Or, he could turn down any possible buyer because the law says that any sale must be approved by the government.
But both of these ideas are flawed because the rule also makes it illegal for any other platform, like Alphabet’s GOOGL -1.71% GOOG -1.58% Google or Apple’s AAPL 0.59%, to share the TikTok app.
