Trump Supports TikTok Amid Potential US Ban

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has expressed his support for TikTok, even as the popular app faces a potential ban if its Chinese-parent company ByteDance doesn’t divest its U.S. assets.

Speaking to Bloomberg BusinessWeek in an interview posted Tuesday, Trump said, “I’m for TikTok because you need competition. If you don’t have TikTok, you have Facebook and Instagram.” This stance marks a notable shift for Trump, who previously labeled TikTok, which boasts 170 million American users, as a threat. Interestingly, he joined TikTok last month.

This is a significant change for Trump, who has a tumultuous history with social media giants. Following the Capitol Hill riot on January 6, 2021, Meta Platforms-owned Facebook and Instagram suspended him for two years. Despite this, Trump told an interviewer in June that he would never back a TikTok ban.

While TikTok declined to comment on Trump’s latest statements, the context around TikTok’s operations in the U.S. remains contentious. As president, Trump attempted to ban both TikTok and Chinese-owned WeChat in 2020, though his efforts were thwarted by the courts. In a contrasting move, President Joe Biden retracted a series of Trump-era executive orders aimed at banning these platforms in June 2021.

Now a key figure in social media, Trump holds a major stake in the Trump Media and Technology Group, which runs the competitor network Truth Social. This company has a market cap of $7 billion despite generating modest quarterly revenue comparable to just two U.S. Starbucks shops.

The future of TikTok in the U.S. remains uncertain, particularly with legal challenges ahead. In September, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will hear arguments concerning a new law that mandates ByteDance to sell TikTok’s U.S. assets by January 19, or risk a ban.

Scheduled at a critical juncture in the 2024 presidential election cycle, the hearings could have widespread implications. This law, signed by President Biden on April 24, sets the deadline for ByteDance to divest from TikTok by January 19. The White House defends this move on national security grounds, although Biden’s administration does not advocate for an outright ban on TikTok.

The backdrop for this legislation includes mounting concerns among U.S. lawmakers. They fear that China could potentially access American data or utilize the app for espionage. These apprehensions led to the law’s rapid passage through Congress in April, just weeks post-introduction.

As the debate around TikTok continues to unfold, its fate will significantly impact the tech landscape and potentially the political climate as well.

Source: Reuters