As United States President-elect Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House, TikTok could be in line for a reprieve from the very leader who led the charge to ban the embattled video-sharing platform.Under a law signed by US President Joe Biden in April, ByteDance, the Chinese owner of the wildly popular app, was given nine months to divest its stake in the company or face a ban on national security grounds.
The deadline for the sale – January 19 – is the day before Trump’s inauguration.
On the campaign trail, Trump, who signed an executive order seeking to ban the app during his first term, pledged to “save TikTok” but neither he nor his transition team have disclosed further details about what this might mean for ByteDance.
The president-elect potentially has several options, although he would not be able to overturn the law enforcing the ban on his own, according to legal experts.
Originally passed in the US House of Representatives as the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, a shorter version of the ban was tacked onto a Senate bill approving foreign aid to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan.
Shortly after it was signed into law, ByteDance initiated a lawsuit arguing that the ban violates the freedom of speech o …
