Trump Is Wrong to Defy TikTok Law

National Review Online

Saturday, April 05, 2025

 

President Trump is freelancing on TikTok.

 

Defying the clearly expressed mandates of a statute passed recently with wide bipartisan support in Congress, he is delaying a ban on the app for another 75 days. His first 75-day extension of the ban also violated the law, which allows for a single extension up to 90 days provided that the president certifies that there is a serious deal on the table. Now, he’s doubling down. His TikTok extensions belong in the same category of executive lawlessness as former President Biden’s actions to wipe out student loan debt and President Obama’s non-enforcement of immigration law.

 

TikTok is supposed to be taken down until ByteDance sells the app to a buyer that is not beholden to Beijing. The president’s preferred approach, though, keeps TikTok up and running, while the administration, in his words, makes “tremendous progress” toward a deal. In his Truth Social statement on Friday, the president tied the TikTok talks to the ongoing negotiations with Beijing regarding the tariffs he imposed on China during “liberation day” and at the start of his presidency.

 

At least this dispenses with the pretense that TikTok is anything but a tool of Beijing. ByteDance cannot sell TikTok without the Chinese Communist Party’s approval. If it were to do so, top ByteDance executives — and TikTok CEO Shou Chew, a Singaporean citizen who has extensive professional ties to China — would be severely punished. It’s why they toe Beijing’s line, and why TikTok is such a threat to America’s sovereignty and national security.

 

But Trump is negotiating against himself. He is making clear that he is loath to let TikTok go dark. The correct and lawful approach would be to ban the app until a deal is completed — if, that is, one can even be made. That would show General Secretary Xi Jinping that Trump’s interest is in putting America’s interests first and saving the app second.

 

By now, though, it’s become clear that the president is beholden to associates who take money to lobby for ByteDance, which is deeply tied to Beijing’s military-industrial complex. Through them, the Chinese firm has persuaded the president to defend a tool wielded by America’s foremost foreign adversary. It should be his obligation, instead, to heed a duly enacted U.S. statute, which is supposed to be the law of the land, not a suggestion to be heeded or ignored depending on how the president of the United States feels about TikTok today.