The US Supreme Court has upheld the law which states TikTok must be sold or become banned from the United States. The law goes into effect on Sunday, January 19th. This is just one day before Inauguration Day when President Donald Trump will officially take office, replacing Joe Biden. This means that SCOTUS essentially put the ball in the Biden administration’s court.
If the Biden admin choses to enforce the law, then TikTok’s parent company “ByteDance” would be force to sell the wildly popular social media app to a USA-based company such as Google or Apple. If they cannot and/or refuse to sell, then the app would become legally unusable in the states. The enforcement mechanism could be the US Government issuing fines against companies like Apple who would serve the app to phones via the App Store.
Without the enforcement mechanism, TikTok cannot be banned. ByteDance could make the move of removing TikTok from the United States voluntarily, but that is unlikely to happen. The app is far too valuable of an asset to all parties involved for ByteDance to give it up without a requirement.
Since both the Biden admin and incoming Trump admin have said that they aren’t going to enforce the ban, the app isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. There is a chance that the law could be leveraged for negotiation purposes. Also, the law could be expanded upon in the future to blanketly ban all social media applications from China for the purposes of national security.
SOURCES:
Supreme Court Rules on Potential TikTok Ban: Live Updates and What’s Next – The New York Times
Biden won’t enforce TikTok ban after signing law last year, leaving fate to Trump: official | Fox Business
