Summary
- Trump plans to delay the TikTok ban by 90 days upon reentering office to work on a solution with the app’s CEO.
- The TikTok CEO praises Trump for agreeing to work together, aiming for long-term maintenance of the app.
- The long-term future of the app remains uncertain.
President-Elect Donald Trump’s apparent plans to save TikTok, the video-based social media app that he once tried to ban during his past stay in office, seem to be taking shape on the eve of his second inauguration. A victory rally scheduled for one day before the swearing-in ceremony will see some of his supporters in attendance, and sources indicate that group will include TikTok‘s chief executive officer.
TikTok went dark in the United States during the evening of January 18, hours before a Congressional order enacting a nationwide ban of the app would have taken effect. Although many of its 170 million daily users in the United States were prepared to say goodbye to TikTok, some functions of the app mysteriously began working again less than a day later.
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A report from CNN indicates that Trump plans to sign an executive order on his first day in office that would move the ban back by 90 days. Likewise, TikTok has confirmed that it is in the process of restoring its app for users in the United States. A vote by Congress in the spring of 2024 saw a majority of both Democrats and Republicans requiring the app be banned across the country if TikTok’s China-based owner, ByteDance, did not sell the company by January 19, 2025. ByteDance still owns TikTok, and after several attempts to reverse Congress’ decision through the courts, the Supreme Court’s ruling to uphold the TikTok ban earlier this week had seemed like it would be the end of the last-ditch effort to preserve service in the United States before Trump’s intervention.
TikTok is Working on a Long-Term Solution with Trump
Trump, despite having signed an executive order to ban TikTok in 2020 — which was put on a temporary stay by a federal judge and later reversed by the Joe Biden administration — began publicly opposing Congress’ bipartisan effort to order a new ban while he was on the campaign trail in 2024. More recently, both the current president and the president-elect seem to have backed down from their former opposition, with Biden stating he would not enforce the ban set to take place during his last day in office and Trump now apparently working closely with TikTok’s corporate leadership.
Trump’s previous comments vowing to preserve TikTok have been praised by TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, who addressed the app’s U.S.-based users in a TikTok video that went live shortly before the app went dark across the country, thanking the president-elect for agreeing to work with the company in what he called “a strong stand for the first amendment and against arbitrary censorship.” Despite many videos being currently unavailable on the platform, Chew’s message praising Trump is still viewable. Chew indicates that he and Trump have long-term plans for maintaining TikTok’s availability nationwide, but there is no indication yet whether that will still require ByteDance to sell it.
