Chinese TikTok hopes that Trump will intervene to save it

On Friday, a US appeals court upheld a law requiring ByteDance, owner of TikTok, to sell the platform or face a ban next year, dealing a major blow to the Chinese company behind the app. The law signed by President Joe Biden this year stipulates that TikTok will be banned in the country if the application does not withdraw its investments from the parent company by January 19, 2025, which is the day before the inauguration of Donald Trump as president.

The ruling, which was taken unanimously in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, confirmed that the law, which aims to protect US national security and has strong bipartisan support in Congress, is constitutional and does not violate the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of expression, as TikTok claimed. “The government acted to protect this freedom from a hostile foreign state only and to limit that adversary’s ability to collect data about people in the United States,” the court says.

The decision puts TikTok in a precarious position in one of its largest markets, although the political future of the law is uncertain. In the election campaign before his re-election, Trump said he opposed banning the platform, and promised to “save” the app.

In an email to employees, TikTok CEO Xu Ziqiu wrote that the next step would be to “seek an injunction to block the ban, pending review by the US Supreme Court,” according to a person familiar with the matter.

The law requires Apple and Google to remove the social media app, which is very popular among younger Generation Z users, from their app stores before the January deadline, and the app is also banned from web hosting services.

TikTok said after the ruling: “The Supreme Court has a solid historical record of protecting Americans’ right to freedom of expression, and we expect them to do just that on this important constitutional issue.” The company added: “Unfortunately, the TikTok ban was based on inaccurate, flawed, and hypothetical information, which may lead to outright censorship of the American people.”

US Attorney General Merrick Garland said, “The ruling is an important step in preventing the Chinese government from using TikTok to collect sensitive information about millions of Americans, secretly manipulate content provided to the American public, and undermine our national security.”

The Chinese embassy in Washington confirmed that the law will have a “dangerous impact on the online social platform, which is used by half of Americans,” and is considered “a blatant act of commercial theft.”

Trump’s transition team did not respond to a request for comment. But Mike Waltz, a lawmaker from Florida and the next US National Security Advisor, told Fox Business, “Trump wants to save TikTok.”

Waltz, who in the past called for a ban on TikTok, added: “We urgently need to allow the American people to access this application, but we must also protect our data.”

Waltz noted that Trump’s position was “to allow the American people full access to what is a great product, but at the same time protect their data.”

The senator from Florida, who is hardline in dealing with China and whom Trump nominated as Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, also supported banning TikTok.

Last May, TikTok and ByteDance filed a lawsuit against the US government to block the draft law, claiming that it is unconstitutional and violates the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of expression. TikTok denied that the Chinese government had any control over the app, or that it had handed over any data to Beijing, and its lawyers also claimed that concerns about advertising on the app should be addressed through a disclosure requirement, rather than a comprehensive divestment or ban law.

American officials claimed that ByteDance might be forced to share the personal information of TikTok’s 170 million American users with officials in Beijing under Chinese law, and use the app’s algorithms to spread propaganda and misinformation.

The Department of Justice claimed earlier this year that some of the data of American TikTok users was stored in China.

The court said last Friday that the government’s national security “justifications” for the law were “convincing.” The judges stressed that China “poses a particularly important hybrid trade threat” because of the laws governing Chinese companies, adding that Beijing “also uses its cyber capabilities to support influence campaigns around the world.” The judges wrote that China “manipulates public discourse on TikTok in order to serve its own ends, and its ability to do so is inconsistent with the fundamentals of freedom of expression.” About the Financial Times

. The decision puts TikTok in a risky position in one of its largest markets.