Will TikTok be able to survive in the US if Trump becomes president?

The fate of TikTok in the US has been in doubt since 2020, when President Donald Trump moved to ban popular video app for national security reasons.

This began four years of disputes between the app’s Chinese owners and the US government. possible ban scheduled to take effect the day before Trump inauguration in January.

One catch: Trump recently changed his mind, joining TikTok in June and posting on social media“Those who want to keep TikTok in America are voting for Trump.”

“We’re not doing anything with TikTok,” he said.

This gave hope to some creators.

“The fact that Trump has done a complete 180 and wants to wait and reevaluate how things are going with TikTok – I think we’ll be fine,” said creator Kat Vera, 34, who posts content about fitness and cars and has 457,000 subscribers. on Tik Tok.

But there are factors that complicate the application’s situation. Several legal experts and tech industry observers said TikTok’s growth path remains precarious.

“It’s just a huge mess and it’s unclear,” said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond.

In April Biden signed the law Congress has passed a resolution requiring TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to divest its ownership of TikTok by Jan. 19 or face a U.S. ban due to security concerns over the app’s ties to China.

Biden has the option of extending ByteDance, but some legal experts say that is unlikely. Changing the law would require Congressional approval, they said. Instead, some believe the issue could be decided in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

TikTok and ByteDance sued the US government in Mayarguing that banning the app would violate First Amendment free speech rights and that the new law “does not support the message” that TikTok’s Chinese ownership represents. national security risks.

Experts said they expect the court to make a decision next month. If the court rules in favor of TikTok and ByteDance, the law would be declared unconstitutional and the government is unlikely to appeal under the new Trump administration.

But if the court rules against the app and the tech giant, they could appeal to the Supreme Court and ask for a stay of the new law, said Michael Stovsky, a partner at the Benesch law firm in Cleveland.

“They’ll probably ask the court to say, ‘Look, don’t follow the law. Don’t ask the company to sell until the Supreme Court hears the case,” Stovsky said.

Representatives for TikTok and the Trump administration did not respond to requests for comment.

In the lawsuit, TikTok and ByteDance said they had been trying to work with the US government’s Committee on Foreign Investment to address security concerns since 2019.

Under the terms of the deal, outlined in a 90-page draft agreement, data collected on TikTok users in the US would have to be handled by US tech giant Oracle. The proposed agreement also stipulated that Oracle would test TikTok’s code for vulnerabilities and subject the platform’s content to independent monitoring.

If TikTok fails to comply, the draft agreement includes financial penalties and also includes the possibility of suspending TikTok’s US operations. TikTok and ByteDance said it was unclear why the committee ultimately decided the proposed agreement was insufficient.

Meanwhile Trump changed his stance on TikTok, at least in part, for obvious personal reasons and his dislike of the app’s competitors. Earlier this year, he called himself a “big TikTok star.”

“If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in March, referring to Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook’s parent company, Meta. “I don’t want Facebook, which cheated in the last election, to do better. They are the real enemies of the people!”

Republican leaders accused the social networking site of censorship of conservative viewswhich Facebook denied, saying it has guidelines that “do not allow the suppression of political views.”

Trump, who has 14.6 million followers on TikTok, joined the popular video app several months after meeting with Jeff Yass, a ByteDance investor, major GOP donor and co-founder and managing partner of Susquehanna International Group, but Trump told CNBC they didn’t discuss TikTok.

People who worked for Trump also joined TikTok. The Club for Growth, a conservative economics group, has hired former Trump aide Kellyanne Conway to defend TikTok in Congress. According to Politico.

But the Trump administration will have to deal with differing views within the Republican Party on TikTok, with some favoring a tough stance on China.

“I think this will be a piece in a much larger game involving tariffs with China, security agreements and all of that, and that TikTok will become part of the larger equation,” said Freddie Tran Nager, associate director of digital at USC Annenberg. . Master’s Program in Social Media.

TikTok has a strong presence in Culver City. The city estimates it employs about 440 people. The company, with 170 million users in the US, has become an important content promotion tool for video creators, small businesses, music artists and Hollywood studios.

Earlier this year, TikTok notified the state of California that it would fade away In July, Culver City laid off 58 employees “due to restructuring.” Positions affected included senior business analysts and global product specialists.

Many creators have already moved to publishing their content on other platforms, so they don’t rely solely on TikTok. Some say that the earning potential is better on competing services.

Theodora Moutinho, a fitness creator and actress from Glendale, said she has learned to always adapt to the fast-paced world of social media.

The 25-year-old became a creator in 2017 and today has 4.2 million followers on Instagram, 1.3 million on TikTok and 421,000 on Snapchat. She’s now putting more effort into her Snapchat and Instagram accounts, while keeping an eye on new platforms like Bluesky.

“Ever since it became clear that they were going to take it down and not take it down, I kind of stopped concentrating on it,” Moutinho said of TikTok. “Because why try to grow something if it might fall?”

Times researcher Scott Wilson contributed to this report.