WASHINGTON – The US government has decided against enforcing its ban on Chinese-owned social media sensation TikTok to comply with a federal court ruling issued in a national security case, a media report said yesterday.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the US Commerce Department has decided to hold off on enforcing a Donald Trump administration order to ban the video-sharing app owned by the Chinese-based ByteDance.
The move comes after a federal court in Pennsylvania blocked the Trump administration from carrying out the ban, which had been ordered by the White House based on claims that the app posed a security threat due to the company’s links to Beijing.
According to the report, the Commerce Department said the shutdown order will not go into effect “pending further legal developments”.
Other court cases are also pending on the matter.
ByteDance had been given until yesterday to restructure ownership of the app in the US to meet national security concerns, but it filed a petition at a court here this week asking for a delay.
The company, in a Tuesday statement, said it had asked the government for a 30-day extension because of “continual new requests and no clarity on whether our proposed solutions would be accepted”, but it was not granted.
The Trump administration has been seeking to transfer ownership of TikTok to an American business to allay security concerns, but no deal has been finalised. – AFP, November 13, 2020
