Can Donald Trump save TikTok?

The fate of ByteDance-owned TikTok in the US rests in the hands of the Supreme Court and Donald Trump, who has promised to “save” the app as a possible ban in the country next year looks more possible.

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Friday upheld a law requiring China’s ByteDance to sell the short-video platform or face a US ban by January 19, 2025 – a day before Trump nominates Joe Biden as US president replaced.

TikTok is expected to appeal. If that fails, the app could be banned in the US for a day before Trump takes office, which would be a blow to the app’s 170 million American users and the developers and marketers who rely on the platform. It would then be up to the new president to find a way to convince Congress to repeal the same law he passed this year with overwhelming bipartisan support — or find another way to do it himself.

“The whole thing is going to be a mess to the point,” said Alan Rozenshtein, a law professor at the University of Minnesota Law School.

What will TikTok do next?

TikTok will likely exhaust all legal options to get the law overturned. A first step would be to seek further review by the Washington appeals court or go directly to the US Supreme Court, which would have to agree to hear the case. If so, the platform will likely also seek a court order to temporarily prevent the law from taking effect on January 19th.

TikTok said Friday: “The Supreme Court has a proven, historical track record of protecting Americans’ right to free speech, and we expect it will do just that on this important constitutional issue.”

America’s highest court has “signaled that companies that operate platforms have First Amendment interests,” said Aziz Huq, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School. But it was also “open to restrictions on freedom of expression in the context of national security”.

What can Trump do?

Without a legal victory, TikTok’s survival will likely rest in Trump’s hands. Before his election, he said he would not ban the app upon his return to the White House to maintain “competition” in a market dominated by Mark Zuckerberg’s meta, which the president-elect has called “the enemy of the people” .

It is unlikely that Trump, as president, would have the legal authority to unilaterally stop the law. He could ask Congress – where both houses are controlled by his fellow Republicans – to repeal the law. He could also urge his new attorney general not to enforce it, while assuring Apple and Google that they won’t be penalized if they continue to support the app in their app stores.

Rozenshtein pointed out that the law allows TikTok to continue if the president determines that the app is no longer under Chinese control – and argued that Trump could simply declare that this is the case.

Would ByteDance sell TikTok?

The clearest path for TikTok to avoid a ban is a sale that separates the app and its U.S. user data from its Chinese parent company. TikTok has argued that the Jan. 19 deadline was too close to sell given its complex integration with ByteDance. However, the appeal court disagreed, saying it was a “significant amount of time.”

A sale would also be difficult from a regulatory perspective and could provoke backlash from Chinese authorities and the public. After the law was passed in April, ByteDance said it had no intention of selling the company.

In 2020, China updated its export control rules, effectively giving Beijing a say in any deal that sells Chinese technology to an American buyer. Last year, China’s Ministry of Commerce said it would “strongly oppose” a forced sale of TikTok.

Regardless, there are some buyers floating around. Frank McCourt, an American media and sports entrepreneur, has formed a consortium of investors that would bid for TikTok through his nonprofit organization Project Liberty, which was founded in 2021 to advocate for a fairer internet. A spokesman said this week that its investor group had made informal capital commitments of more than $20 billion.

Likewise, former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in May he was putting together a group of investors to try to buy the app, while Rumble, a right-wing social media platform, said in March it would join a consortium to acquire TikTok participate.

Software giant Oracle struck a deal with TikTok in 2020 under the name Project Texas to store American users’ personal data in the U.S., but it is unlikely to wholesale the app. TikTok began moving US data to Oracle Cloud in 2022.

What does this mean for US-China relations?

The TikTok ban in the US is seen as one of the latest signs that US-China relations are on a downward trend and that trust in Chinese companies operating in the US is widespread. Trade tensions had increased this week after the US cracked down on China’s chip industry again, the third in three years.

Proponents of a ban have raised concerns that the Chinese Communist Party could access TikTok’s user data or control its algorithm to target disinformation – although the US government has provided no evidence of misuse of the app. TikTok said it would not comply with an attempt to exert power over the company in this way.

Craig Singleton, a China expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the court ruling was a “symbolic and strategic loss” for China in the broader technology competition with Washington, calling it a “powerful tool” for influence and data collection in the US.

Chinese authorities could hit back at the U.S. ban on TikTok through political means, such as imposing stricter export controls — for example, on minerals that are critical ingredients in the production of computer chips — or blocking any sales outright, citing concerns regarding national security and fair competition.

The impact of the US court’s ruling on bilateral relations will depend on whether Trump seeks to defuse competitive tensions with China over the app if he becomes president again.