The president-elect of the United States, Donald Trump, on Friday asked the Supreme Court to postpone until he takes office the implementation of a law that would ban TikTok in the country if its owner does not sell the platform.
“President Trump urges the court to suspend the effective date of the law to allow his incoming administration to seek a solution that could avoid a national shutdown of TikTok,” his lawyer, John, wrote in a document filed with the highest court. Sauer, who is also the candidate for attorney general of the United States.
Sauer emphasizes that waiting to implement the law would preserve “the First Amendment rights of tens of millions of Americans,” while addressing “the government’s national security concerns.”
This extension “would grant President Trump the opportunity to seek a political solution that could obviate the court’s need to decide these constitutionally important issues,” according to his lawyer.
The Supreme Court agreed last week to examine TikTok’s appeal of this law, which would force ByteDance, its Chinese owner, to sell the popular video-sharing platform as a condition of maintaining its activity in the country.
Read: Trump says it might be worth keeping TikTok in the US for a while longer
The highest judicial body scheduled the arguments in the case for January 10 and did not suspend the entry into force of the law on January 19, as the company intended.
The law, signed by President Joe Biden in April, would block TikTok from app stores in the United States unless ByteDance completes the sale by January 19.
Congress approved it arguing that it seeks to prevent risks of espionage and manipulation of users by Chinese authorities.
For its part, TikTok denies having transmitted information to Beijing and maintains that the law violates its free speech rights protected by the First Amendment.
The potential ban could strain relations between the United States and China just before Trump’s inauguration on January 20.
The Republican has become an unexpected ally of TikTok, because he considers that its ban would mainly benefit giants like Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta (owner of Facebook and Instagram, among other networks).
In fact, this month he met with the platform’s CEO, Shou Chew, at his golf club in Mar-a-Lago (Florida).
With information from EFE
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