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TikTok's history in the United States is a complicated one, especially in recent years. In August 2020, then-President Donald Trump issued an executive order seeking to ban the app for national security reasons, as NPR reported at the time.
The ban faced a litany of legal challenges and never actually came into force, and in 2021 then-President Joe Biden revoked Trump's executive order entirely.
Then, as a separate NPR report detailed earlier this year, Biden signed a law which would ban TikTok unless it was sold within a prescribed time frame. That deadline of Jan. 19, 2025, is fast approaching.
Now, questions are circulating about the fate of the popular social media platform as Trump, having emerged victorious in the Nov. 5 election, has signaled at least some interest in preventing or otherwise sidestepping the ban — an apparent change of heart. According to Bloomberg, Trump has "suggested publicly that he thinks a TikTok ban is a bad idea."
But will Trump actually try to halt the upcoming TikTok ban, and is such an outcome feasible?
Trump, TikTok, and the Options on the Table
Writing for Bloomberg, Alexandra S. Levine laid out a variety of potential outcomes presented to Trump as he prepares to take office.
"It’s possible Trump could devise an alternative solution to a sale, urge Congress to roll back the law or instruct his Justice Department not to enforce it, but none of those scenarios are as simple as they sound," Levine suggested.
While pushing a repeal of the ban through Congress — which it appears Trump may have great control over, after the GOP achieved both House and Senate majorities, according to CNN projections — may appear the simplest option, it comes with a few serious caveats.
First, as ABC News' Max Zahn reported, Congress voted on the ban just seven months ago. In the House, the ban passed by a landslide, with 352 representatives voting for and 65 voting against. Similar results came from the Senate, with 79 senators voting for the ban, 18 voting in opposition, and three electing to abstain. It would likely take a great deal of Trump's political capital to force a complete reversal of fortunes concerning the TikTok ban after such a recent, decisive result.
Second, as Zahn indicated, there is the matter of Trump's policy stance on matters concerning China. ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, is a Chinese organization.
"A repeal effort carries political risks for Trump, since it could be perceived as conciliatory toward China, in contrast with the adversarial tone voiced by Trump on the campaign trail, James Lewis, a data security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told ABC News," Zahn wrote.
Trump May Not Have To Do Anything at All, but a Sale Is Far From Guaranteed
There is a chance, albeit a slim one, that Trump may not have to act on the ban whatsoever.
The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington is set to deliver a ruling on the ban on Dec. 6, per ABC News. However, based on results of the September hearing concerning the ban — one which "did not go well for TikTok" — Bloomberg Intelligence analysts slashed the likelihood of TikTok beating the ban from 70% to just 30%.
Lastly, a buyer may emerge. According to Bloomberg, one name that has already signaled interest is former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who served under the Trump administration during the president-elect's first term. This avenue, too, is fraught, as Intelligencer pointed out.
"After years of work, the campaign to ban TikTok has substantially succeeded. Now, it needs to be actively undone, and the Trump administration is probably going to have to participate in that undoing. The possibilities are not ideal. The government could get more directly involved in finding an American buyer, which ByteDance has supposedly ruled out and could risk destroying the app (Chinese export controls might prevent ByteDance from including its recommendation algorithms — the core of the platform — in a sale)," Intelligencer stated.
This much is certain: TikTok's fate in the United States is far from sealed in any form.