Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
The Biden administration says it will leave it to incoming President Donald Trump to figure out how to deal with the mess of the TikTok ban, ABC News reports.
“Our position on this has been clear: TikTok should continue to operate under American ownership,” a White House official said. ABC News. “Given the timing of when it goes into effect during a holiday weekend a day before the inauguration, it will be up to the next administration to implement it.”
But don’t get too excited. Although Trump has offered vague promises to save TikTok, there is still not much he can do eliminate the enormous monetary risk companies like Apple and Google could face it until the law is on the books. And for that reason, the same goes for Biden — unless he formally extends the timetable for the sale of TikTok by Chinese owner ByteDance up to 90 days before the ban goes into effect.
The White House statement ABC It doesn’t seem to suggest that Biden plans to take that route, and the Biden administration did not immediately respond The Virginthe request for clarification. But technically, to grant an extension, Biden would need to see progress toward a sale. So far, according to several reportsByteDance has been focused on fighting the law, rather than scouting potential buyers. Even so, a handful of Democratic lawmakers led by Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) — who is try to get Congress to extend the deadline — he asked in a letter to Biden to use the 90-day extension.
While TikTok itself is not mandated by law to shut down, it can still choose to go dark as was expected if he fears that his US service providers, including Oracle, may choose not to risk helping him operate or upgrade. TikTok, Oracle, Apple and Google have yet to publicly say how they plan to handle Sunday’s deadline. We still haven’t heard from the Supreme Court – what he seemed ready to uphold the law and just said Thursday what is “may announce opinions” at 10 AM ET on Friday – but since it has so far refused to pause, the ban will be at least technically goes into effect on Sunday, whether or not anyone chooses to do anything about it.
