A court injunction still bars the government from banning the app
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
The US government has given video sharing platform TikTok another reprieve, but its not totally clear how the latest deadline extension will be enforced or what the penalties would be.
On Friday, the Trump administrations Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) issued a notice giving TikTok a new deadline to either sell or spin off its US business: November 27th (which happens to be the day after Thanksgiving in the US). But its not clear what legal authority CFIUS would have to take action once that day arrives, since the council is still bound by an injunction issued by a federal court in Pennsylvania on October 30th.
Its the latest twist in an extremely confusing case that started over the summer. President Trump said in August that TikTok and its parent company, China-based ByteDance, presented a national security risk to the US, and issued an order requiring TikTok to sell its US business. Trumps order would have blocked all US transactions with ByteDance, and required ByteDance to destroy any TikTok data from US users.
The administration also said TikTok had to report to CFIUS once all the data had been destroyed, and required ByteDance to destroy any data collected from TikTok precursor app Musical.ly, which the company bought in 2017.
On September 18th, the US Commerce Department issued an order to block downloads of the app in the US. But a day later, the president said he had approved in concept a bid from Oracle to become TikToks trusted tech partner. That deal called for creating a new entity, TikTok Global, which would be based in the US and take over processing and storage for all US-based TikTok users.
That deal has been in limbo, however, and TikTok said earlier this week it had received no substantive feedback from the Trump administration for some time. The company filed a petition seeking a 30-day extension of the original November 12th CFIUS deadline.
On Thursday, the Commerce Department issued an unpublished rule saying the agency is complying with the terms of that judges ruling. Its prohibition of TikTok transactions has been enjoined and will not go into effect, pending further legal developments.
Since the government is enjoined from taking action against TikTok, its not clear why an extension from CFIUS was necessary at this stage. But it seems more and more likely that the future of the app wont be decided by the current administration; at the very least, it appears the Trump administrations interest in the matter has waned as it focuses on other issues.
TikTok did not immediately reply to a request for comment Friday.
On November 13th, the Trump administration issued a notice giving TikTok a new deadline to either sell or spin off its US business. But the government is bound by an injunction issued by a federal court in Pennsylvania that bars it from banning the app.
