Trump supports TikTok as US ban looms over ByteDance divestment

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has stated that he supports TikTok, despite the possibility of a ban if Chinese parent company ByteDance fails to divest the short video app’s assets in the United States.


“I support TikTok because you need competition. “If you don’t have TikTok, you have Facebook and Instagram,” Trump told Bloomberg Businessweek in an interview published Tuesday. Trump had referred to TikTok, which is used by 170 million Americans, as a threat until joining the platform last month.

Trump, who has attacked Meta Platforms-owned Facebook and Instagram for suspending him for two years following the tragic Capitol Hill brawl on Jan. 6, 2021, told an interviewer in June that he would never back a TikTok ban.

TikTok declined to comment. As president, Trump attempted to ban TikTok and Chinese-owned WeChat in 2020, but the courts halted the plan. In June 2021, President Joe Biden reversed a series of Trump-era executive actions that aimed to ban WeChat and TikTok.

Trump owns a majority position in Trump Media and Technology Group, which operates the competitor network Truth Social. Trump Media has a $7 billion market capitalization despite quarterly revenue of around $770,000, which is similar to two Starbucks stores in the United States.

In September, a US appeals court will hear oral arguments on legal objections to a new legislation that requires China-based ByteDance to sell TikTok’s US assets by January 19 or face a ban.

The hearing before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will take place during the last weeks of the 2024 presidential election cycle.

Biden signed the measure on April 24, giving ByteDance until January 19 to sell TikTok or face a ban. The White House says it wants to end Chinese ownership for national security reasons, but not a ban on TikTok. The Biden campaign joined TikTok in February.

Driven by concerns among US senators that China may use the app to acquire data on Americans or spy on them, the bill was enacted by Congress decisively in April, only weeks after it was introduced.