President Donald Trump has issued an executive order telling the Department of Justice to not enforce a rule that demands TikTok spin off from its Chinese parent company ByteDance or face a ban.
The order, issued on Trump’s first day of office, is meant to effectively extend the deadline for a sale by undercutting penalties on American companies like Apple and Google working with TikTok. It directs the Attorney General “not to take any action to enforce the Act for a period of 75 days from today to allow my Administration an opportunity to determine the appropriate course forward in an orderly way.” The AG is supposed to “issue a letter to each provider stating that there has been no violation of the statute and that there is no liability for any conduct that occurred.”
The order furthermore instructs the Department of Justice to “take no action to enforce the Act or impose any penalties against any entity for any noncompliance with the Act” and says they should be barred from doing so “for any conduct that occurred during the above-specified period or any period prior to the issuance of this order, including the period of time from January 19, 2025, to the signing of this order.”
Trump, who issued an executive order banning TikTok during his first term in 2020, is now trying to circumvent a bipartisan law that took effect January 19th. He posted on Truth Social before taking office that he was “asking companies” to keep working with TikTok, a move that could mean risking hundreds of billions of dollars in fines if Trump’s assurances don’t stand up in court. TikTok briefly went down on Sunday but quickly came back online — though it was removed from Apple and Google’s app stores and has not come back.
It’s unclear whether Trump can legally pause the TikTok ban. The law allowed for a 90-day extension if ByteDance announced a sale to a non-”foreign adversary”-based company before the deadline, but not only has no such sale been announced, it’s legally ambiguous whether the extension can be used after the 19th. Trump, in any case, isn’t so far using the deadline — he’s just attempting to override the law.
Despite that reassurance, it still may not be enough to convince service providers covered by the law to reinstate TikTok. As many legal experts have pointed out, those companies could face up to about $850 billion in potential penalties for violating the law — which was passed by a bipartisan Congress, signed by former President Joe Biden, and upheld by the entire Supreme Court. The government could act on any potential violation even five years after it happens — and an executive order doesn’t change that, though it might help give the companies a slightly better due process defense to fight it. Companies still might not risk litigation over such a large potential fine, though they may also be wary of raising Trump’s ire by refusing to work with TikTok.
On top of all this, the rule the order says it’s “not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States,” which makes it even less reliable as a defense for companies.
Trump also declared on Sunday that the US government will own 50 percent of TikTok through an unexplained “joint venture” with a private company. It remains unclear how this would work.