Trump opposes TikTok ban in SCOTUS brief
In a friend-of-the-court brief, Trump argues the ban could impede his foreign policy and set a troubling precedent.
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump on Friday signaled his opposition to a law banning the popular social media app TikTok, asking the Supreme Court to grant his incoming administration time to negotiate a solution.
The move came as lawyers for the platform also urged the justices to reverse the law, which was upheld by an appeals court earlier this month.
In a friend-of-the-court brief, lawyers for Trump argued that the law, set to go into effect one day before his inauguration, would impede his administration’s ability to conduct foreign policy based on the president’s “sole discretion over the deliberative processes of the executive branch.”
“The federal government’s effective shuttering of a social media platform used by 170 million Americans is sweeping and troubling,” the brief stated. “There are valid concerns that the act may set a dangerous global precedent by exercising the extraordinary power to shut down an entire social-media platform based, in large part, on concerns about disfavored speech on that platform.”
In addition to First Amendment concerns, the brief argued that the law raised “significant concerns about possible legislative encroachment upon the president’s prerogative to manage the nation’s geopolitical, strategic relationships overall and with one of our most significant counterparts, China.”
The outgoing administration, for its part, argued that the law “addresses the serious threats to national security posed by the Chinese government’s control of TikTok, a platform that harvests sensitive data about tens of millions of Americans and would be a potent tool for covert influence operations by a foreign adversary.”
TikTok, owned by Chinese tech firm ByteDance, is one of the most popular video-sharing platforms among younger consumers in the United States. Many companies and brands advertise on the platform directly or through influencers to highlight their products.
Congress passed, and President Joe Biden signed, a law earlier this year banning the app unless its Chinese parent company divests its ownership. ByteDance says it has no plans to comply, adding that such a move would require the approval of Chinese regulators.
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