US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday ordering his government to suspend for 75 days the application of the law banning the social network TikTok in the United States.
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This law, passed by Congress in 2024 and entered into force on Sunday, requires the parent company of the platform to sell it under penalty of ban on American territory.
It resulted in inaccessibility to the social network for a few hours this weekend.
The law provides for very heavy fines for internet providers and application stores, up to $5,000 per user for the latter.
These sanctions would be imposed by the Department of Justice, which Donald Trump has ordered not to intervene for two and a half months, the time to “consult (his) advisors”, according to the text of the decree.
It also intends to assess the security risks posed by TikTok and its Chinese shareholder and “determine whether the measures already taken by TikTok are sufficient”.
American elected officials had justified the passing of the law by the need to prevent the Chinese authorities from accessing the data of American users or from manipulating opinion in the United States.
During an event open to the press at the White House during which he signed this decree as well as numerous others, the new head of state put into perspective the risks posed by the social network in terms of national security.
“There are so many products that are made in China and the only one they complain about is TikTok,” said Donald Trump, referring to elected officials in Congress.
-“Let’s be honest, we have bigger problems than China harvesting information from young children,” TikTok users, he added.
Rather than finding a buyer, a hypothesis that ByteDance has always refused, the president proposed, as he did on Sunday, that the Chinese group grant the United States 50% of the capital of TikTok in return for not -law enforcement.
The government could then allocate this participation to private American interests, the new president said.
“We might need China’s agreement, but I’m sure they would give it,” Donald Trump said. “TikTok has a lot of value, but if they don’t approve it, it wouldn’t have any more. »
Asked at a press briefing on Monday, the spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs indicated that “in matters of operations and acquisitions, companies should decide independently, in accordance with market principles “.
If China refused to give the green light, “we would impose customs duties on them,” warned the American president.
The former real estate developer has radically changed its stance on the app’s more than 170 million users in the United States.
In 2020, he issued a decree similar in all respects to the law passed four years later, determined to force ByteDance to sell.
But the courts, seized by TikTok, had suspended the application of the text, considering the fears concerning national security to be exaggerated and seeing this decree as an obstacle to freedom of expression.
“I have a weakness for TikTok that I didn’t have at the start,” Donald Trump admitted, “but I went on TikTok (during his campaign) and I brought back the young people.”
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