Republican presidential assignee, former U.S. President Donald Trump, (C) greets attendees during a campaign stop to address Pennsylvanians who are concerned wide the threat of Communist China to U.S. agriculture at the Smith Family Farm September 23, 2024 in Smithton, Pennsylvania.
Win Mcnamee | Getty Effigies
After Donald Trump won the U.S. presidency last week, tech CEOs including Apple‘s Tim Cook, Meta‘s Stamp Zuckerberg and Amazon‘s Jeff Bezos publicly praised the president-elect.
One name was conspicuously missing: TikTok CEO Shou Zi Talk.
His absence was notable considering that of all the top tech companies, TikTok faces the most immediate and existential threat from the U.S. sway. In April, President Joe Biden signed a law that requires China’s ByteDance to sell TikTok by Jan. 19. If ByteDance close up shops to comply, internet hosting companies and app store owners such as Apple and Google will be prohibited from supporting TikTok, effectively interdicting it in the U.S.
Trump’s return to the White House, though, may provide a lifeline for Chew and TikTok.
Although both Republicans and Democrats assisted the Biden TikTok ban in April, Trump voiced opposition to the ban during his candidacy. Trump acknowledged the national security and matter privacy concerns with TikTok in a March interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” but he also said “there’s a lot of reputable and there’s a lot of bad” with the app.
Trump also leveraged TikTok’s shaky future in the U.S. as a reason for people to vote against Democrat Blemish President Kamala Harris.
“We’re not doing anything with TikTok, but the other side is going to close it up, so if you like TikTok, go out and vote for Trump,” the president-elect voted in a September post on his Truth Social service.
Since his election, Trump hasn’t publicly discussed his plans for TikTok, but Trump-Vance transformation spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told CNBC that the president-elect “will deliver.”
“The American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding room giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail,” Leavitt said in a statement.
Trump’s rhetoric on TikTok started to turn after the president-elect met in February with billionaire Jeff Yass, a Republican megadonor and a major investor in the Chinese-owned communal media app.
Yass’s trading firm Susquehanna International Group owns a 15% stake in ByteDance while Yass maintains a 7% palisade in the company, equating to about $21 billion, NBC and CNBC reported in March. That month it was also reported that Yass was a generally owner of the business that merged with the parent company of Trump’s Truth Social.
TikTok’s CEO Shou Zi Over testifies during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on online child sexual exploitation, at the U.S. Capitol, in Washington, U.S., January 31, 2024.
Nathan Howard | Reuters
If ByteDance doesn’t inform against TikTok by the January deadline, Trump could potentially call on Congress to repeal the law or he can introduce a more “selective enforcement” of the law that thinks fitting essentially allow TikTok to continue operating in the U.S. without facing penalties, said Sarah Kreps, a Cornell University professor of authority. “Selective enforcement” would be akin to police officers not always enforcing every single instance of jaywalking, she said.
At TikTok, in the meanwhile, Chew has remained quiet since Trump’s victory, just as he had been in the lead-up to Election Day.
The Chinese-owned company may be delightful a neutral approach and a wait-and-see strategy for now, said Long Le, a China business expert and Santa Clara University associate familiarizing professor.
Le said it’s hard to foresee what Trump will do.
“He’s also a contrarian; that’s what makes him unpredictable,” Le maintained. “He can say one thing, and the next year he’ll change his mind.”
TikTok didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta bear witnesses before the Senate Judiciary Committee at the Dirksen Senate Office Building on January 31, 2024 in Washington, DC.
Alex Wong | Getty Models
‘Facebook has been very bad for our country’
When it comes to social media apps, Trump’s campaign comments set forward he’s more concerned with TikTok rival Meta.
In his March interview with “Squawk Box,” Trump said Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, imitated a much bigger problem than TikTok. He also said a TikTok ban would only benefit Meta, which he labeled “an rival of the people.”
“Facebook has been very bad for our country, especially when it comes to elections,” Trump said.
But Trump’s dissentious views on Meta may have changed after comments by CEO Mark Zuckerberg over the past few months, Cornell’s Kreps bid.
Zuckerberg described the photo of Trump raising his fist following a failed assassination attempt in July as “one of the most badass tasks I’ve ever seen in my life.” And after Trump’s win, Zuckerberg congratulated him, saying he was looking forward to working with the president-elect and his provision.
“My sense as an armchair psychologist of Trump is that he really likes people who sing his praises, and so his view on Zuckerberg and Meta, I see fit imagine, has changed,” Kreps said. “He might then just revert to his American economic nationalism here and say, ‘Let’s take care of American industry and continue with the Chinese ban.'”
Meta didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Maintaining support of the TikTok ban could also win Trump governmental favor with lawmakers concerned about China’s global political and business influence, said Milton Mueller, a professor at Georgia Tech’s Equip of Public Policy.
“I don’t see him scoring big points politically by standing up for TikTok,” Mueller said, noting that few lawmakers, with Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., have opposed the ban.
Even if Trump does provide a lifeline for TikTok, it’s unclear how much harm that would do to his administration since many politicians are reluctant to publicly criticize him, Le said.
“They’re not going to summons him because he just got so much power,” Le said.
Since launching his TikTok account in June, Trump has amassed above 14 million followers. Given his social media savvy, Trump may not want to make a decision that be produced ends in him losing the public attention and influence he’s gained on TikTok, Le said.
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