President-elect Trump could keep his pledge to “save” TikTok -– and still address national security concerns that spurred Congress to authorize a ban — by brokering a sale of the Chinese-owned app to a US buyer, experts told The Post.
China-based ByteDance has until Jan. 19 to completely divest its stake in TikTok or face a total US ban of the app.
In a last-ditch scramble to nix the law, ByteDance and TikTok have appealed to the Supreme Court – and cozied up to Trump in the hope that he can somehow intervene.
The Supreme Court agreed to take up the case on Wednesday and has scheduled oral arguments for Jan. 10 — just nine days before the ban takes effect.
A US appeals court previously rejected TikTok’s bid to block the bill in a 3-0 decision, which suggests the company faces an uphill battle to win a late reprieve.
If Trump agrees that TikTok should remain online in the US and decides to get involved, a full divestiture is the only realistic path forward, according to Michael Sobolik, senior fellow at American Foreign Policy Council and author of “Countering China’s Great Game.”
“If you really want TikTok to operate in the United States, and if you want it to operate safely for Americans, then there needs to be a complete separation from its parent company,” Sobolik said. “And there cannot be any sort of ownership or control, direct or indirect, from a foreign adversary government. I don’t think there’s any alternative.”
Trump – who led the original push to ban TikTok during his first term – said at a Monday press conference that he has a “warm spot in my heart” for TikTok and would “take a look” at the situation. Soon after, Trump met with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
Details from the meeting have yet to emerge and it’s unclear whether the talks between Trump and Chew yielded any progress toward a resolution.
Representatives for TikTok and the Trump transition team did not return requests for comment.
Brokering a deal will be no easy feat. TikTok has insisted that it is not for sale and argued that the tight divestment window made finding a buyer impossible, even if it were inclined.
China also has said it will resist any attempt to force a TikTok sale – and Beijing has export controls to stop the sale of its algorithm.
Still, the looming deadline “creates a great opportunity for a win-win situation” if Trump can hammer out a deal, according to Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Select Committee on China, which led the charge on the ban-or-sale bill.
“President Trump is a great negotiator. He loves America. He loves our national security,” Moolenaar told The Post. “He also recognizes that TikTok is a very valuable platform, and I think he will be able to put together a coalition of people who want to see this app continue in the United States, but do it in a secure way.”
The Justice Department described TikTok as “a national-security threat of immense depth and scale” that functions as a Chinese spying and propaganda tool on US soil, capable of secretly manipulating content served to users through its recommendation algorithm and mass data collection such as location-tracking, among other risks.
TikTok has argued that the sale-or-ban law is unconstitutional and vehemently denied that it poses a threat to national security.
Aside from helping to negotiate a deal for TikTok, Trump is limited in what he can do to intervene. The law gives the president the power to impose a 90-day extension on the Jan. 19 deadline if there are signs of significant progress toward a deal.
Trump could push Congress to amend or reverse the law, but that could prove difficult given the overwhelming bipartisan support it received.
He could also direct the Justice Department not to enforce the law – but that would shift major legal liability to app store operators like Google and Apple.
Last week, the House Select Committee on China sent letters to Google’s Sundar Pichai and Apple’s Tim Cook reminding them they are obligated to remove TikTok from their app stores by Jan. 19 if a sale wasn’t reached.
The uncertainty about Trump’s strategy on TikTok has created a conundrum for Republicans – including some close allies – who have vocally supported a ban.
“Trump was the original champion for the TikTok ban, so it makes it difficult for his fellow Republicans to now have another opinion,” one DC insider who requested anonymity said. “Trump can get away with that, but they certainly can’t.”
While softening his rhetoric toward TikTok, Trump has appointed several China hawks and outspoken TikTok critics to key Cabinet and government agency positions.
That includes Secretary of State nominee Marco Rubio, Under Secretary of State nominee Jacob Helberg, incoming US Ambassador to the United Nations Elise Stefanik and FCC Chairman Brendan Carr.
It’s possible that Trump will seek to use TikTok as a bargaining chip as part of broader negotiations with China, according to Nathan Leamer, a former FCC policy adviser and CEO of Fixed Gear Strategies.
“With Trump in office, it’s a whole new ballgame to hold China accountable,” Leamer said. “TikTok is an arrow in his quiver. Maybe they do make a deal for the CCP to divest. No one is against the platform if it’s separate from ownership by a totalitarian state.”
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