What’s next for TikTok in the USA after Trump begins his second term in office in January? Elon Musk will also be a decisive factor. In his approach, Trump also has to demonstrate top sensitivity among his party colleagues.
What’s next for TikTok? Now that Donald Trump is heading into his second term. Will he finally close the shop, or will he even choose a much more moderate approach than the Biden administration, which introduced a corresponding law? Some TikTok employees and creators who have been preparing for a possible ban from the platform see Trump’s re-election as cause for hope.
Trump, who has publicly indicated he thinks a TikTok ban is a bad idea, may try to kill legislation signed by President Joe Biden. The law requires TikTok’s parent company to divest its US business or the platform will be banned from the American market. Even if this is fundamentally difficult to achieve, it would mean massive hindrances and difficulties for the millions of US users. In addition, ByteDance (TikTok) has no interest in selling its biggest drawcard.
TikTok law not only from Democrats
It’s possible that Trump could find an alternative solution to a sale, ask Congress to roll back the law or instruct his Justice Department not to enforce it, but neither of these scenarios is as easy as they sound. In addition, the TikTok law is not only from the hands of the Democrats. The popular app is also highly controversial among Republicans. The Chinese affiliation, the suspicion of espionage and the accusation of active political influence. They fear he could be unpredictable or antagonize allies in Congress who drafted the law, and they wonder whether he’ll still be interested in TikTok after the campaign ends.
Still, Trump’s victory “significantly improves the situation for TikTok – no question about it,” said former National Security Agency general counsel Glenn Gerstell in an interview with Bloomberg. “You now face a president who is officially committed to lifting the ban.”
“There are 100 other factors, so nothing has been decided yet,” he added. “But the dynamic has changed in favor of TikTok.” TikTok did not respond to a request for comment.
Policymakers on both sides of the spectrum have long viewed TikTok as a threat to U.S. national security because of the app’s ability to collect large amounts of sensitive data about American users and influence public discourse. Trump tried to ban TikTok through an executive order during his last presidency, but that attempt failed and ultimately fizzled out after he lost his re-election bid.
Trump: “Facebook – an enemy of the people”
The idea of better securing or otherwise banning TikTok gained new momentum under Biden as Congress saw clearer evidence that ByteDance had accessed sensitive U.S. TikTok data in China and used TikTok to monitor American citizens. Congress passed a bipartisan bill that would force a sale or result in a ban, and Biden signed it into law in April.
TikTok and ByteDance sued the U.S. government in May to challenge the divestment or ban measure, which they say is unconstitutional. Perhaps equally important, Trump also publicly spoke out against a TikTok ban — shocking many in his own party.
“What I don’t like is that without TikTok, you’re going to make Facebook bigger, and I view Facebook as an enemy of the people,” Trump told CNBC in March, repeating that sentiment in a later interview with Businessweek. (He denied that the change of heart had anything to do with his connection to major Republican donor Jeff Yass, who owns a $15 billion stake in ByteDance.) Shortly thereafter, Trump joined TikTok to reach young voters in his re-election campaign.
There’s a chance Trump will never have to intervene. The US Court of Appeals in Washington heard TikTok’s arguments challenging the law in September and is expected to make a decision on whether to uphold or overturn it by December 6. However, the September hearing did not go well for TikTok. After it ended, analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence lowered TikTok’s predicted chances of circumventing the ban from 70% to 30%.
Tough stance against China is key
The legal process could drag on if the losing side asks the Supreme Court to review the decision. Other legal maneuvers could also delay the trial beyond Jan. 19, potentially suspending the law for months or longer while the court deliberates. Biden could also decide to extend the sales deadline by 90 days. (There is only a 20 percent chance the D.C. Circuit will suspend the deadline, according to new forecasts from Bloomberg Intelligence.)
In such a scenario, Trump could sit back and let the legal process take its course, avoiding a complete about-face in his crusade against TikTok in 2020 and helping him maintain the tough stance on China that is central to his agenda.
However, if he needs to act, Trump has several options. He could find an American buyer – his former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is among those who have expressed interest – although ByteDance has said it is unwilling to give up TikTok’s powerful recommendation engine.
Trump could try to keep TikTok through a new solution that addresses both the company’s and the U.S. government’s national security concerns, like another, more effective version of Project Texas, TikTok’s $1.5 billion effort Americans’ data with the help of Oracle Corp. to shield from China.
Oracle is already a favorite TikTok partner
In fact, the software giant gives Trump another justification for going easy on TikTok: Through its collaboration with Project Texas, the social network is now a major Oracle customer, and Oracle was Trump’s original choice to buy the video app in 2020, when he tried to make his own deal. Company executives, such as Chief Executive Safra Catz, were close to Trump early in his first term, while other tech industry leaders criticized him. But the picture is now fuzzier, with chairman and co-founder Larry Ellison supporting Trump rival Tim Scott in the Republican primary.
Trump could also push Congress to repeal or amend the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, or push for entirely new legislation, both in the face of overwhelming bipartisan support rather unlikely for the original draft law. Trump could theoretically order his Justice Department not to enforce the law or to enforce it only selectively, but that could put American tech companies in a precarious position. Existing law requires companies such as Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google to remove TikTok from their U.S. app stores and web service providers must stop hosting the traffic. Otherwise, they could quickly face huge fines.
Trump could also take other measures to overturn the legislation, such as an executive order opposite the one he tried to use in 2020.
But all of that could become moot once Trump returns to the White House and is briefed by federal agencies on classified national security information that he simply didn’t have access to during the campaign, said Sarah Kreps, director of the Tech Policy Institute at the Brooks School of Cornell University Public Policy.
“When he made these comments outside of office, he was not privy to the intelligence information that appears to have influenced many members of Congress in 2023 and 2024,” Kreps told Bloomberg. “When he did this [Verbot] in 2020, it was pure antipathy towards China, without much evidence of what China might do.”
Unknown variable Elon Musk
And then there’s the question of how Trump’s approach to TikTok might be influenced by his confidante and billionaire X-owner Elon Musk, who arguably did more than anyone else to help Trump reclaim the presidency. Trump has already promised Musk a significant role in the White House, and it’s possible he will also ask the social media owner for advice on how to handle TikTok, which could create a conflict of interest.
“On the one hand, Musk is much less hostile toward China than the Biden administration or Trump was,” Kreps said, pointing out that Musk’s car company Tesla does a lot of business in China.
On the other hand, Musk’s X, which is entering the video market this year, could benefit from a TikTok ban. “I don’t think it’s exactly a competitor to TikTok like something like Instagram, Snap or Reels would be,” Kreps said, but “it’s people’s time online. And he would rather they spend it on X.”
Musk, for his part, said around the time Biden signed the bill that TikTok should not be banned, even though a shutdown of his own platform could give a boost.
“Doing this would go against freedom of speech and expression,” Musk wrote on X in April. “This is not what America stands for.” (bloomberg/stein)
