Trump signs executive order to suspend TikTok ban, grant immunity to tech companies: NPR

President Trump signed an executive order Monday aimed at pausing a law banning TikTok and providing liability protection for the popular video app’s business partners.

According to the order, the law will be suspended for 75 days and companies that work with TikTok will not be responsible for it.

The text of the order says this will give the Trump administration time “to pursue a resolution that protects national security while saving a platform used by 170 million Americans.”

“Essentially, with TikTok, I have the right to sell it or shut it down,” Trump said from the Oval Office after signing the executive action Monday. “We may have to get approval from China. I’m not sure. I’m sure they will approve.”

Trump said his administration would work on “a joint venture” between the United States and other undisclosed entities.

“I think a lot of people would be interested,” Trump said.

Trump’s action is linked to a TikTok law that took effect Sunday that makes it a crime — punishable by hefty fines — for companies to support TikTok as long as the service is controlled by ByteDance, a Beijing-based technology company. Lawmakers from both parties, who adopted the law in April, there were concerns that TikTok could cooperate with the Chinese government to use the app for espionage or harmful data collection.

Earlier this month, the The Supreme Court ruled the app’s “well-supported” national security concerns warrant a forced sale – and if TikTok remained owned by ByteDance, the crackdown on TikTok would begin on January 19.

In response, on the eve of this date, companies that provide web hosting and cloud infrastructure to TikTok, including Oracle and Akamai, abandoned the video app. Google and Apple have removed TikTok from their app stores. TikTok has also taken the dramatic step of turn off your serversrendering millions of Americans dark for about 14 hours.

But the service was restored Sunday morningafter Donald Trump, then still president-elect, wrote on Truth Social that he planned to take executive action to delay the effective date of the ban law and provide legal cover for TikTok’s business partners once once entered the White House.

Businesses reacted differently to Trump’s social media post. TikTok turned its servers back on and sent a notification to all users crediting Trump for TikTok’s return. Oracle and Akamai have restored web support.

Apple and Google are resisting, however. And that’s because, under the law, returning a ByteDance-owned TikTok to app stores would be illegal and expose them to potentially billions of dollars in fines. Trump’s executive actions don’t change that, legal experts say.

Apple, Google, Oracle and Akamai did not respond to requests for comment.

While Trump’s executive action On Monday, attempts to clarify TikTok’s legal landscape, constitutional lawyer Alan Rozenshtein of the University of Minnesota Law School said that trying to extend the law’s effective date and isolate companies of any liability did not change an act of Congress.

“These actions do not prevent the law from being in effect. And it does not prevent, say, Oracle, from violating the law – which it is currently doing, as far as I know,” Rozenshtein said.

The law allows for one exception: TikTok can continue to operate if Trump certifies to Congress that “significant progress” has been made toward separating TikTok from ByteDance’s ownership.

The law requires Trump to show Congress that there are legally binding agreements in place on ownership changes at TikTok.

Rozenshtein said that if Trump told Congress that these things happened, when they didn’t, in order to extend the legal date for the ban to take effect, then “that would effectively mean that the one of his first acts as president would be to lie to Congress.”

Some legal experts expect Trump’s executive action to be challenged in court by a technology company in order to obtain a “declaratory judgment,” a ruling aimed at clarifying the confusing legal situation. They believe Apple and Google are concerned about possible shareholder lawsuits over the market value that the big tech companies could suffer if they violate a federal law.

However, an important aspect of the law banning TikTok is that its interpretation and enforcement depends on the White House – even if that means, technically speaking, not following the requirements of the law.

“The law gives extraordinary power to the office of the president,” said Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington who specializes in technology policy.

Yet any legal shield Trump promises through executive action won’t hold up in court, Rozenshtein argues.

“It’s not a power that the president has, and he can’t wish it into existence just by saying something and calling it an executive order,” he said.

Another risk for Apple, Google, Oracle and other companies supporting TikTok: the possibility that Trump will later turn against the video app and then try to use the law in retaliation.

“The minute Trump withdraws his support — if he does — that’s when TikTok goes dark,” Calo said. “And that’s why everyone is currying favor with Donald Trump.”