President Donald Trump signed an executive order to temporarily delay the US ban on TikTok, ordering the Justice Department to stop enforcing the controversial law for 75 days. This does not mean that TikTok is saved.
Trump quickly signed a series of executive orders a few hours after being inaugurated for a second term as US president on Monday, declaring a state of emergency on the US-Mexico border, ending the federal government’s efforts to diversify, and officially creating the Department of Government Operations led by Elon Musk. (“DOGE”).
Among these was Trump’s promised major executive order regarding the Protection of Americans from Foreign Enemy Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA), also known as the US TikTok ban. In it, Trump ordered the Justice Department not to apply the ban for two and a half months, allowing TikTok to temporarily continue operating in the US without retaliation.
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“I am ordering the Attorney General to take no action to implement this Act for a period of 75 days from today to give my administration the opportunity to determine the appropriate course of action in an orderly manner that protects national security while avoiding a sudden shutdown. a social media platform used by millions of Americans,” Trump’s order read.
The delay means the ban will go into effect on April 5, with Trump saying he intends to “negotiate a decision to avoid an abrupt shutdown of the TikTok platform while addressing national security issues” in the meantime. The new US president previously expressed his belief that he could do so last December, submitting a brief to the Supreme Court asking it to temporarily suspend the ban on TikTok on this basis.
It’s unclear how Trump plans to sell such a deal. Unless PAFACA is repealed, the sale of TikTok’s US operations will be the only way the app can legally stay in the country. TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has given no indication that it would agree to entertain this, maintaining that such a split is “technically, commercially, and legally impossible.”
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Trump may try to overturn the law, but doing so will take a lot of time — probably longer than TikTok’s 75-day execution. Therefore, US users may find themselves disconnected from TikTok again in April.
The TikTok ban is still legal, but enforcement has been temporarily suspended
TikTok added a pop-up message saying Trump has returned to the US after a brief shutdown on Jan. 19, 2025.
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To be clear, Trump’s order does not make it illegal for TikTok to remain in the US beyond the ban’s Jan. 19. PAFACA still exists, and TikTok is still technically banned even during this 75-day grace period.
Instead, Trump has recently ordered that no penalties be imposed on TikTok or other apps affected by this law for their actions during the time it took effect until 75 days from his executive order. He also ordered that letters be sent to the relevant organizations telling them that working at this time will not violate the law or incur debts.
“[E]even after the expiration of the period specified above, the Department of Justice shall not take any action to enforce the Act or impose any penalties on any party for any conduct that occurred during the period specified above or at any time prior to the issuance of this order, including the period from January 19, 2025, until the signing this order,” read Trump’s order.
If the ban were enforced, TikTok could be fined up to $5,000 per US user. For 170 million such users, it would be a fine of about $850 billion – almost three times the valuation of ByteDance last November.
With its appeal to the Supreme Court rejected last week, TikTok now seems to have no choice but to pin its hopes on the continued presence of the US in Trump. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew was one of several tech executives who attended Trump’s inauguration on Monday, thanking the new US president for his support.
Trump’s self-proclaimed “warm spot” for TikTok has recently been compared, with the president previously issuing an order to ban the app in 2020 during his first term in office. After that, he appeared to have lost interest in the ban, which was never used before Biden dropped it a year later. Now Trump seems to have changed his mind about TikTok, thinking last December that “maybe we should keep this app for a while.” Clearly the millions of views his videos have accumulated have gone a long way in his favor.
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