What you need to know
- TikTok has recently filed a new petition in a US Court of Appeals about the ban as it hasn't heard from the Trump administration for weeks.
- The deadline for TikTok to divest itself is November 12, but it's unclear what will actually happen if the deadline passes.
- The initial deal to sell parts of the TikTok US business to Oracle and Walmart looks uncertain as of right now.
As we've frequently reported, the US government, or particularly, the Trump administration, has been attempting to ban the TikTok app from its US operations for several months now, supposedly due to national security concerns.
However, according on a new report by The Verge, TikTok believes that the Trump administration is no longer strongly pursuing this endeavor.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) had originally set the deadline of November 12 for ByteDance to completely sell off its TikTok US assets. According to TikTok, the company has requested a 30-day extension, but it has not heard back from the CFIUS in the past few weeks. It's also unclear what will happen if TikTok does not divest itself and the deadline passes.
While ByteDance did come to a deal to sell TikTok US assets to Oracle and Walmart, it's uncertain if the deal will ever go through without an approval from the Chinese government.
In a new statement, TikTok has declared that they are filing a petition to a US Court of Appeals to order a legal review of the recent actions of the CFIUS.
Today, with the November 12 CFIUS deadline imminent and without an extension in hand, we have no choice but to file a petition in court to defend our rights and those of our more than 1,500 employees in the US. We remain committed to working with the Administration — as we have all along — to resolve the issues it has raised, but our legal challenge today is a protection to ensure these discussions can take place.
Without a clear ban in sight, TikTok continues to be one of the hottest social media apps on smartphones today, and with the Trump administration having other important matters to focus on at the moment (like losing the election), it's not hard to imagine that they've forgotten about the popular mobile app.
