Trump’s return could “save” TikTok in the United States

TikTok is on the verge of being banned in the United States. This is because the American Congress approved a rule in April last year that requires the video application to be sold to an American company by January 19, 2025. The justification is that the current company that controls the platform, the Chinese ByteDance, is subject to “Chinese government influence” and could leak personal data of American citizens.

The company denies its relationship with the Chinese government, however, the State owns 1% of Douyin Information Service Co., the affiliate of ByteDance. The company claims normality under Chinese legislation and that this “does not affect ByteDance’s global operations outside of China, including TikTok.”

Critical of the video platform in the past, President-elect Donald Trump appears to have “changed his mind” about TikTok. In his first term, he even tried to ban the application, without success.

Now, the Republican has appealed to the Supreme Court to suspend the ban approved by Congress. Trump suggests that TikTok could indeed be able to guarantee the country’s national security and, at the same time, preserve the platform’s operation in the United States.

Shou Chew, CEO of TikTok, already participated in meetings with the president-elect at the end of last year, however, he sees no easy way to lift the ban – and one of the reasons is that the ban was approved with Republican votes.

Trump takes office as President of the United States on January 20, one day after the possible ban from the platform.

Although the company denies on its website any close relationship with the Chinese government, reports in the Financial Times newspaper published last year show that the government’s ties with TikTok’s parent company appear to have increased.

The company ByteDance was founded in 2012 in the Chinese capital by IT students Zhang Yiming and Liang Rubo. It quickly became a success, and Yiming became the richest man in China – until he left the company in a strange way, in 2021, and was replaced by Singaporean Shou Chew.

During a US Congressional hearing in March 2023, Chew avoided answering questions about the origins of ByteDance, in an attempt to claim the company was founded in China, however, it is currently a “global organization”.

Allegations of proximity to the Chinese government are not the only argument for banning the company from American territory. TikTok has not only gone viral for children and young people but has become a very popular means of communication for political topics – added to this have come allegations of “manipulation”.

The most emblematic political case was in Romania, where the right-wing candidate Calin Georgescu, famous on TikTok, had his victory annulled due to “suspicion of Russian manipulation”. The election will be redone. The case is being investigated by the European Union.

In Albania, TikTok for reasons of protecting young people, after using the platform to organize a knife showdown. The decision came after the death of a teenager.

In 2020, India also tried to ban TikTok and currently, the video platform is already banned from the work devices of EU officials and politicians in Germany. Similar measures were implemented in several other countries.