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TikTok chief government Shou Zi Chew met Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Monday, in keeping with two folks aware of the matter, as the favored video app pins its hopes on the president-elect saving it from a looming US ban.
The ByteDance-owned app is predicted to be banned for the corporate’s 170mn US customers if it doesn’t divest from its Chinese language mother or father underneath a regulation that comes into power on January 19, the day earlier than Trump’s inauguration as president.
The personal assembly between the pair comes as TikTok’s makes an attempt to battle the ban in court docket have to date fallen brief. A US appeals court docket rejected a challenge to the law and subsequent request to halt it whereas the corporate escalates its problem to the Supreme Courtroom.
Trump has beforehand mentioned that he’ll “save” the platform, in an try to protect “competitors” with Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, which he has criticised for allegedly censoring rightwing voices.
Talking to reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort, Trump reiterated that sentiment, saying he had a “little little bit of a heat spot” for TikTok, citing his overperformance with younger voters — who make up the video app’s core consumer base — within the presidential election earlier this yr.
“We’re looking at it,” Trump mentioned when requested how he deliberate to cease subsequent month’s ban on the app.
TikTok nodded to Trump’s place in a movement on Monday asking that the Supreme Courtroom quickly block the regulation.
“There’s a cheap risk that the brand new administration will pause enforcement of the act or in any other case search to mitigate its most extreme potential penalties,” TikTok mentioned within the court docket submitting. “It could not be within the curiosity of anybody — not the events, the general public, or the courts — for the act’s ban on TikTok to take impact just for the brand new administration to halt its enforcement hours, days, and even weeks later.”
The divest-or-ban regulation was championed by Joe Biden’s administration on nationwide safety grounds, with the Division of Justice arguing the app could possibly be wielded by Beijing for propaganda and espionage functions given its Chinese language mother or father. It handed with bipartisan help in Congress.
TikTok has deemed the regulation unconstitutional and argued {that a} spin-off could be technically “unfeasible” within the regulation’s timeframe. Beijing has additionally mentioned it opposes a sale.
Trump has not made clear the mechanisms he would use to keep away from a TikTok ban. Some consultants notice the regulation permits TikTok to proceed working if the president determines that the app is not underneath Chinese language management, speculating that Trump may merely declare that is the case.
US firms and their chiefs have been lining as much as meet or court docket the president-elect, with Meta chief government Zuckerberg donating $1mn for Trump’s inauguration. Amazon, and OpenAI chief government Sam Altman, have each additionally donated to the occasion.
Liberal Hollywood has been much less keen to this point. However Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s co-chief government, will meet Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday.
As head of Netflix’s content material companies, Sarandos is the streaming large’s most seen face in Hollywood. He and his spouse, Nicole Avant, are additionally outstanding Democratic celebration donors, having raised cash in Hollywood for Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, who confronted Trump within the 2024 election.
Avant, who served as ambassador to the Bahamas underneath Obama, has had robust phrases for her fellow Democrats following Harris’s loss to Trump. “The Democratic celebration wants a actuality test,” she advised the Hollywood Reporter this month. “Individuals need to regroup.”
