The President of the United States, Donald Trump, has issued an executive order preventing the Department of Justice from enforcing the law that forces the Chinese company ByteDance to sell TikTok to avoid a ban on operating in the United States. The measure, signed on the first day of his mandate, aims to effectively extend the deadline set by the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act”. The intent is to avoid sanctions against American companies such as Apple and Google, which collaborate with TikTok. The order requires the Attorney General to suspend the application of the legislation for 75 days, thus giving the Administration the time necessary to evaluate the most appropriate path. Additionally, the Department of Justice must officially notify service providers that no violations of the law have occurred and that there are no legal consequences for past actions.
The executive order also specifies that the Department of Justice will not impose sanctions for any violations of the legislation, extending this exemption also to infractions that occurred before its entry into force, including the time window between January 19, 2025 and the date of its signing . The decision represents an attempt to circumvent a bipartisan law that went into effect on January 19. Back in 2020, Trump signed an executive order to ban TikTok in the United States. Before his inauguration, he had publicly expressed on Truth Social his intention to urge companies to continue collaboration with the platform, despite being aware of the risk of possible economic sanctions.
Recently, TikTok suffered a temporary outage and was removed from Apple and Google’s digital stores, but has not yet been reinstated. It remains uncertain whether the executive order would actually suspend enforcement of the law. The original legislation only allowed a 90-day extension if ByteDance announced the sale of the app to a company not owned by a “foreign adversary” before the deadline. Since such a sale has not yet taken place, the legal validity of an extension remains uncertain. In this scenario, Trump is not exploiting the mechanisms provided by the law, but is attempting to neutralize it directly.
Despite the executive order, companies may not feel reassured enough to reinstate TikTok. According to some legal experts, the companies involved could face fines of up to $850 billion for failure to comply with the legislation, which was passed by Congress, signed by former President Joe Biden and upheld by the Supreme Court. Additionally, the government has the discretion to enforce fines up to five years after any violations, making the executive order a limited legal remedy. Companies, in addition to wanting to avoid litigation, may fear political repercussions if they do not comply with the Trump Administration’s directives.
Finally, the order expressly states that it does not create any legally binding rights or benefits against the U.S. government, making its effectiveness as a defense tool even more uncertain. Furthermore, Trump has announced the possibility that the US government could acquire a 50% stake in TikTok through an unspecified “joint venture” with a private company, a proposal that raises numerous questions about its feasibility and legal implications.
