A US appeals court in Washington has satisfied a request from the Department of Justice to dismiss a Trump-era attempt to lift the suspension on the TikTok ban.
Following Joe Biden's inauguration, the DoJ changed course and instead of restoring Trump's order prohibiting Americans from downloading the app, it asked the court to dismiss the previous appeals. Today's court decision thus keeps Trump's order against TikTok unenforced.
U.S. President Joe Biden signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, after his inauguration as the 46th President of the United States, U.S., January 20, 2021. REUTERS/Tom Brenner
© AP Photo / TOM BRENNER
On his first day in office, President Biden overturned many of Trump's executive orders and ordered a review of numerous policies established under his presidency. The US confrontation with TikTok and the company’s owner, China’s ByteDance, is one of the Trump policies that are being reviewed.
Donald Trump vs TikTok
ByteDance and its highly popular short-video platform TikTok became one of many targets in Trump's crackdown on Chinese companies. The Republican POTUS argued that the private data of Americans was endangered by the app, which could allegedly pass it over to the Chinese government. The company strongly denied the allegation as well as claims that Beijing might use the platform to influence the US election in 2020.
Trump imposed a ban on the platform, prohibiting new downloads of the app for US users. However, ByteDance challenged the order in court and it was suspended on 23 September. The Trump administration failed to dispute the barring of the ban in its final months, being preoccupied with challenging the election results.