Trump ignored TikTok ban, then announced a deal. Here’s what it means.
When President Donald Trump declared on September 15 that his administration had entered into an agreement with China to sell Tiktok – a popular social platform built around catchy short videos – he said that it would be a new happy for millions of users of the application. But they may not have on the edge. Although it was prohibited in January, Tiktok remained fully operational because the Trump administration did not apply the law, saying that it was negotiating an agreement.
The day before President Trump’s inauguration, American applications stores were faced with $ 5,000 penalties per Tiktok user if they continued to distribute or host the application. Congress, citing concerns that the Chinese government could access the personal data of Tiktok users, had reached a rare bipartisan consensus: it adopted a law obliging Tiktok to be banished unless China is signed on a sale by Bytedance, the parent company of the application.
The extensions ordered by Mr. Trump have kept the available application and the prohibition to be applied. But Tiktok’s future has not been resolved.
Why we wrote this
The congress said Tiktok should be prohibited unless it is sold by its Chinese owner. For months, President Trump has controversially delayed the application of this law. He now says that the United States concludes an agreement with China that responds to America’s security problems.
Even if an agreement with China occurs, the trip has raised a lasting question on the balance of powers and if a president can simply refuse to promulgate a law adopted by the congress.
What do we know about the Tiktok agreement?
The Trump administration said on Monday that it had entered into an agreement with China for Tiktok to take place in the United States. The Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, described the “executive” agreement and said Trump will meet the Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Friday to conclude the agreement.
The United States and China are committed to talks in Madrid this weekend to discuss trade and other questions. The administration has not published details on the agreement, in particular which is the buyer proposed by Tiktok.
Bessent said the agreement responded to American security concerns while being “just for the Chinese”.
Why did Tiktok remain available?
Stimulated by fears that the Chinese government can access the personal data of Tiktok users, the congress was massively adopted the ban in April 2024. The law prohibits the distribution of Tiktok as long as it is a country based in a country designated as a “foreign adversary”.
The text of the law gave the president the possibility of granting a “extension to 1 time in no more than 90 days” before enforcing the prohibition – if there have been “significant progress” on the disinvestment of the application of its Chinese owner. The president must also certify this progress at the Congress.
April 4 – When the initial extension was to expire – Mr. Trump announced that he would allow Tiktok to continue to run for an additional 75 days, exceeding the 90 -day limit set by the congress. He spent a third extension in June, which expired on September 17.
Tiktok has seen several rich bidders in the meantime, including companies like Amazon and Oracle. US government officials have twice indicated that Tiktok was about to have a buyer, only to have negotiations with the Chinese government that is moving away.
At the end of July, trade secretary Howard Lutnick said in an interview on CNBC that Tiktok was dark in September if China did not give more control in the United States on the application in the next deadline. On August 19, however, the White House launched its own Tiktok account. The next day, the Chinese Communist Party published an editorial in which they expressed the hope that Mr. Trump would extend his non-application of the ban indefinitely.
Can the president ignore a law adopted by the congress?
After President Joe Biden signed Tiktok’s ban in 2024, Tiktok continued the federal government. The case went to the Supreme Court and the nine members confirmed the ban as constitutional.
When Mr. Trump ordered the second extension of the ban in April, the prosecutor General Pam Bondi wrote to leaders of technological companies like Apple, saying that companies would not be required to distribute the application.
Ms. Bondi also said that Trump had decided that a brutal closure of Tiktok would interfere with the president’s responsibilities on national security and foreign policy. In other words, she said that the president had the prerogative to cancel the effects of the law.
In March, several Democratic members of the Congress – who opposed Tiktok’s ban – wrote to express their concern that the administration “ignored the requirements of the law”. Some Republican members have also expressed dissatisfaction, Senator Chuck Grassley telling journalists in June that he wanted to “know that Congress is not played”.
Daniel Farber, the author of “Contested Ground: How to understand the limits of presidential power”, says the capacity of the congress to repel this is limited. A member of the avenue could take would try to force Trump by refusing to confirm his people named or to finance something he wants until he obtains the law.
However, there seems to be little political will at the congress to take direct measures to try to enforce the ban.
What does the delayed application mean for the balance of powers?
Presidents are sometimes able to exercise legal discretion on the laws to be applied, explains Alan Rozenshtein, professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Minnesota. It is in the same way that a police officer could decide not to pull someone to pass slightly above the speed limit.
But according to the letters of Ms. Bondi, Mr. Trump does not claim discretionary power. Instead, she told companies that they had “no violation of the law”. In other words, the administration was not only going to look in the other direction if the technological companies distributed Tiktok – he openly said that companies did not violate the law.
Mr. Farber says it is a critical distinction.
“It is true that the president has the right to prioritize laws, but that does not mean that he can simply decide that he does not like certain laws and will not apply them at all,” he said.
There is a theoretical basis for the argument of the administration according to which he does not have to apply a law which, according to him, will interfere with the constitutional responsibilities of the president, explains Mr. Rozenshtein.
For example, Congress cannot adopt a law saying that the president is not the commander -in -chief (as the Constitution says explicitly). A Supreme Court case during the Obama administration said that the president did not have to follow a Congress Act which would have forced him to recognize Jerusalem as part of Israel.
But according to Mr. Rozenshtein, the assertion of Mr. Trump according to which he can cancel a prohibition of Tiktok adopted by the Congress because it implies that national security carries this argument to an impracticable level.
“By this logic, almost everything that had relations with foreign affairs or other countries could interfere with the constitutional powers of the president,” he said.
And he doesn’t think the fact that Trump has entered into an agreement changes anything.
“You can’t choose,” he says. “You cannot say, I will let the president disobey the laws only when it leads to a good result.”
