President-elect Donald Trump said he plans to issue an executive order once he takes office on Monday to delay a federal ban on the popular social media app TikTok and give its China-based parent company more time to find an approved buyer.
Trump said the order would guarantee no penalties “for any company that helped keep TikTok from going” and further suggested the U.S. government take a 50% ownership stake in the company to keep it alive.
“By doing this, we save TikTok, keep it in good hands and allow it to stay up. Without U.S. approval, there is no Tik Tok. With our approval, it is worth hundreds of billions of dollars – maybe trillions,” Trump wrote in a post on his social media website, Truth Social.
“SAVE TIKTOK” the president-elect added in another post.
TikTok went offline in the U.S. on Saturday in response to a federal law that required the company to divest from its Chinese owner, ByteDance, because of U.S. government concerns ― which Trump once shared ― that it could pose a national security threat. The law was upheld by a unanimous Supreme Court ruling on Friday.
Trump has the power under the law to give TikTok more time to divest from ByteDance ― 90 days ― if he certifies to Congress that there has been significant progress made toward a sale and that the parties have signed “binding legal agreements.”
