The incoming Trump administration and the Biden administration went back and forth on Saturday over TikTok’s status and whether to ban the service after the video app said it would be forced to “go dark” on Sunday when a federal the law applies.
President-elect Donald J. Trump told NBC News that he will “probably” find a way to give the company a 90-day extension once he takes office on Monday “because it’s appropriate.”
Earlier on Saturday, the White House spokesman called TikTok’s claim that it would go dark a “gimmick.” TikTok, in a statement late Friday, had called on the Biden administration to assure Apple, Google and other tech companies that they would not be penalized for providing TikTok services in the United States.
“We have made our position clear and unambiguous: actions to implement this law will fall to the next administration,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.
Despite the back-and-forth, TikTok’s fate was still unclear.
The company’s statement was its latest effort to pressure the administration to grant it a reprieve from a law upheld by the Supreme Court on Friday that would have effectively banned its service from Sunday.
The law says app stores and major cloud computing providers cannot deliver TikTok to US consumers unless the company is sold by its Chinese parent, ByteDance, to a non-Chinese owner. Lawmakers introduced the measure last year amid fears that Chinese ownership of TikTok posed a national security threat.
TikTok did not say what would happen on Sunday, including whether it would shut down voluntarily or simply go out of business because it would lose access to the services it needs to stay online. The app claims 170 million users in the US.
The Biden administration had earlier signaled that federal officials would not immediately take action against Apple, Google and the other companies under the law.
President Biden signed the bill to ban TikTok in April after it passed Congress with bipartisan support. Lawmakers said Beijing could pressure ByteDance to extract sensitive data about American users or influence TikTok’s content to serve the interests of the Chinese government.
TikTok has said the Chinese government has no role in the company and that it has spent billions of dollars to address US security concerns. ByteDance is headquartered in Beijing and subject to Chinese control.
On Friday, the Supreme Court accepted the government’s national security rationale for the law, with the majority noting “TikTok’s scale and susceptibility to control by foreign adversaries, along with the vast swaths of sensitive data the platform collects.”
Lisa Monaco, the deputy attorney general, said in a statement after the Supreme Court’s ruling that the process would evolve “over time.”
TikTok said the Biden administration’s comments were not enough to satisfy other companies that they would not be breaking the law if they continued to distribute and maintain the app. These companies could face fines of up to $5,000 for each TikTok user who accesses the app within the United States after the ban goes into effect.
“The statements issued today by both the Biden White House and the Department of Justice failed to provide much-needed clarity and reassurance to service providers who are integral to keeping TikTok available to over 170 million Americans,” the company said. .
Losing that user base would be significant, but not the biggest that TikTok has suffered. In 2020, it was banned in India, where it had 200 million users. As in the United States, authorities in India cited national security concerns for their decision against TikTok.
Mr. Trump, who takes office on Monday, has previously expressed his support for TikTok and has considered issuing an executive order that would allow TikTok to continue operating in the United States.
But it is unclear whether an executive order by Mr. Trump could effectively stop a ban. Legal experts said he could ask the Justice Department not to enforce the law or delay enforcement for a specified period of time, but how such an executive order would fare if challenged in court is uncertain.
Mr. Trump could also find a buyer, which would allow him to extend the deadline by 90 days if a viable deal is on the table. But no clear buyers have emerged.
It was not clear what 90-day extension Mr. Trump when he spoke to NBC News on Saturday.
“We have to look at it carefully. It’s a very big situation,” he told NBC. If he grants the application a 90-day extension, “I will probably announce it on Monday,” he added.
