WASHINGTON: Donald Trump has urged the United States Supreme Court to pause a federal TikTok law that would ban the popular social media app or force its sale, with the Republican US president-elect arguing that he should have time after taking office to pursue a “political resolution” to the issue.
TikTok and its owner ByteDance are fighting to keep the popular app online in the US after Congress voted in April to ban it unless the app’s Chinese parent company sells it by Jan 19.
They have sought to have the law struck down and the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case.
The court is set to hear arguments in the case on Jan 10.
But if the court does not rule in ByteDance’s favour and no divestment occurs, the app could be effectively banned in the US on Jan 19, one day before Trump takes office.
“This case presents an unprecedented, novel, and difficult tension between free-speech rights on one side, and foreign policy and national security concerns on the other,” Trump said in a filing on Friday (Dec 27).
“Such a stay would vitally grant President Trump the opportunity to pursue a political resolution that could obviate the court’s need to decide these constitutionally significant questions,” the filing added.
Trump’s support for TikTok is a reversal from 2020, when he tried to block the app in the US and force its sale to American companies because of its Chinese ownership.
It also shows the significant effort by the company to forge inroads with Trump and his team during the presidential campaign.
“President Trump takes no position on the underlying merits of this dispute,” said D. John Sauer, Trump’s lawyer who is also the president-elect’s pick for US solicitor general.
“Instead, he respectfully requests that the court consider staying the Act’s deadline for divestment of Jan 19, 2025, while it considers the merits of this case, thus permitting President Trump’s incoming administration the opportunity to pursue a political resolution of the questions at issue in the case,” he added.
Trump previously met with TikTok CEO Chew Shou Zi in December, hours after the president-elect expressed he had a “warm spot” for the app and that he favoured allowing TikTok to keep operating in the US for at least a little while.
Free speech advocates separately told the Supreme Court on Friday that the US law against Chinese-owned TikTok evokes the censorship regimes put in place by the US’ authoritarian enemies.
The US Justice Department has argued that Chinese control of TikTok poses a continuing threat to national security, a position supported by most US lawmakers.
Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen led a coalition of 22 attorneys general on Friday in filing an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to uphold the national TikTok divest-or-ban legislation.
TikTok says the Justice Department has misstated the social media app’s ties to China, arguing that its content recommendation engine and user data are stored in the US on cloud servers operated by Oracle, while content moderation decisions that affect American users are made in the US as well.