WASHINGTON | President-elect Donald Trump's repeated support for TikTok has reignited speculation around a potential solution that would prevent the popular application from finding itself banned in the United States, even if the conditions currently seem nebulous.
“We're going to have to keep him around for a while longer,” Mr. Trump said during a meeting on Sunday, a few days after a meeting in his Florida stronghold with the boss of TikTok, Shou Zi Chew.
Initially opposed to the application, the Republican candidate now believes that it has allowed him to reach a young audience and is no longer too sure that it is in his interest to ban it, a decision which he believes would favor Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.
But it is difficult to have an idea of the outcome that could emerge, said Carl Tobias, professor of law at the University of Richmond, particularly because of the unpredictable nature of the president-elect.
Last April, Congress overwhelmingly voted in favor of a law requiring TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, to sell its American activities before January 19, failing which the application would be banned.
And going back, even after Donald Trump's victory and the Republicans have a majority in Congress, would seem like an obstacle course.
Especially since the question is one of the rare ones to bring together both camps, which makes the possibility of revisiting the law very hypothetical.
The solution could therefore come from the Supreme Court, to which TikTok turned, considering that the law does not respect the First Amendment of the Constitution, which prohibits Congress from restricting freedom of expression.
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The request will be studied by the Court, largely dominated by conservatives, on January 10, nine days before the ban comes into force.
Another possibility would be for the Justice Department to declare that ByteDance addressed the national security concerns that justified the law.
But this could be understood by Congress as a gesture of weakness towards China on the part of the president.
The last solution would be for ByteDance to resell its shares to non-Chinese investors, a possibility that the company has constantly rejected.
Especially since the purchase of the American activities, with its 170 million monthly users, would be very expensive. As president, Donald Trump could delay the ban for 90 days to make it easier.
“The deal of the century”
A few potential buyers came out of the woodwork.
Among them, Mr. Trump's former Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, who runs an investment fund with capital from the Japanese SoftBank Group or the sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi.
Recently visiting Mar-a-Lago (Florida) to meet Donald Trump, Masayoshi Son, the boss of SoftBank, announced that he wanted to invest $100 billion in the United States, without giving further details.
Among other potential buyers, the American billionaire owner of Olympique de Marseille in France Frank McCourt, who wants to make social networks safer through his organization, Project Liberty.
Due to his proximity to Donald Trump, Elon Musk, already owner of X (formerly Twitter), could also have a role to play, while he has already expressed his desire to transform
According to a Republican elected official, the solution could come from a sort of “deal of the century”, orchestrated by Mr. Trump, which would preserve the interests of ByteDance while responding to the concerns of the United States.
According to the chairman of the Commission on China in the House of Representatives, Republican John Moolenaar, the situation could change quickly when ByteDance no longer has a choice.
But any agreement could require the green light from Beijing, we can bet that relations between the two leading economic powers risk remaining tense during Donald Trump's second term.
But this time it will be a question of finding a definitive solution to the question of TikTok in the United States, after a first attempt in 2020, at the end of Mr. Trump's first term.
The American companies Oracle and Walmart had signed a preliminary agreement with ByteDance to acquire a stake in TikTok, but a court decision then the coming to power of Joe Biden put an end to the operation.
