Over the last two weeks, the app TikTok has come under heavy scrutiny from all branches of the United States. federal government in regard to a national ban on the app for national security purposes.
TikTok has not had a smooth relationship with the United States government, with intentions to ban access to the app within the country stemming back almost five years ago to the year 2020. On July 7, 2020, then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo of the first Donald Trump administration announced that the government was actively looking into banning access to the app.
The pressure would continue to build up later into 2020 as Trump ordered the Chinese parent company of TikTok, ByteDance, to sell ownership of the application on July 31, 2020 threatening a shutdown of the application if his demands were not met.
In response to this move, ByteDance agreed to divest the company and began the process of working with potential buyers, namely finding offers from American-based companies such as Oracle and Microsoft.
Following a brief legal scruff between ByteDance and Trump after a potential deal with a buyer could not be successfully met, the situation faded out of importance and tensions eventually simmered down as the Trump administration began putting its focus on the bigger issue of the 2020 election that would take place just a few months later.
In the conclusion of that 2020 election, Joe Biden would be elected as the 46th President of the United States and would be sworn in on January 20, 2021. That June, he would sign an executive order revoking any potential movement or effort to ban TikTok that the former Trump Administration had put in place.
This would seemingly smooth over any tensions between the federal government and the application, but this grace period would be relatively short-lived. Turmoil immediately began to swell surrounding the data security of American citizens on a Chinese-owned app, and in December of 2022, Biden retaliated by ordering that no official government phones were allowed to have TikTok on them.
This anxiety regarding the national security of American data began to trickle down into the chambers of Congress, and the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act was passed with unilateral support from both the Republican and Democratic parties on March 12, 2024. The bill then moved to the Senate, where it was similarly passed with universal praise and moved to the desk of President BIden where the bill would be signed into law on April 24, 2024.
The law determined, similarly to Trump’s past executive order, that ByteDance would have to divest ownership of TikTok to a separate business entity, or its operations would be shut down within United States borders. The law would come into effect on January 19, 2025, which would serve as the deadline given to ByteDance to divest the app.
The day finally came on January 19 of this year, and no official move to change ownership of the app was made. Therefore, TikTok temporarily shut down its operation in the United States for a brief few hours.
President Trump, now newly re-elected in last year’s general election, issued a 75-day period in which the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act would not be enforced, allowing for the continued usage of TikTok in America, a move that greatly differed from his initial opposition.
To date, we are still in the middle of this grace period and the future of TikTok in America is still unclear. However, President Trump has shown that his current position seems to be in favor of continued access to the app, so for any TikTok users, you may not need to hold your breath.
