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Donald Trump has asked the US Supreme Court to delay a legislative deadline that would force a sale or ban on TikTok to allow for a “political solution” once he is sworn in as president next month.
Under a bill passed by Congress in April, Chinese parent company ByteDance must separate TikTok from January 19, 2025 — the day before Trump takes office as president — or face a nationwide ban.
The legislation came after US officials warned that the platform posed a risk to national security, among other reasons Byte Dance could be forced under Chinese law to hand over to Beijing the personal data of the 170 million Americans who use the video app.
But Trump has asked the Supreme Court to suspend the deadline while it considers the merits of the case to allow his new administration “the opportunity to pursue a political resolution of the issues at issue in the case,” according to a brief filed Friday .
During the campaign before his re-election, Trump said he was against banning the platform and had promised to do so “Save” the app.
The effort represents a turnaround from 2020, when then-President Trump issued an executive order blocking the app in the US and gave ByteDance 90 days to divest itself of its American assets and any data TikTok collected in the US had to separate. That order was blocked by the courts and eventually overturned by US President Joe Biden, who later signed the law underlying the case.
The briefing said: “President Trump alone has the deep negotiating expertise, electoral mandate and political will to negotiate a solution to save the platform while addressing the national security concerns raised by the administration – concerns that President Trump himself acknowledged.”
The filing goes on to say that Trump “takes no position on the underlying issues of this dispute.”
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The request throws Trump, who as president would have no authority over the Supreme Court, into the middle of a sensitive court case that will decide the fate of the popular app in the United States.
The Supreme Court has scheduled oral arguments in the case for January 10.
The brief comes after the Supreme Court decided earlier this month to hear TikTok’s appeal of a lower court ruling rejecting its challenge to the law, as well as its subsequent request to stay the measure pending further litigation.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the law earlier this month, rejecting TikTok’s claim that it was unconstitutional and violated the First Amendment’s free speech protections.
