The US Commerce Department said it will not enforce the order to ban the TikTok app in the US, which was set to take effect from 13 November, the Wall Street Journal reports. This follows a court order obtained last month in a case brought by three TikTok users against the government ban.
In announcing its decision, the Commerce Department cited a preliminary injunction against the shutdown last month by US District Judge Wendy Beetlestone in Philadelphia in a suit brought by three TikTok stars. The judge said the government action “presents a threat to the ‘robust exchange of informational materials’” and therefore likely exceeds the government’s authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the law the Trump administration has relied on to take action against TikTok.
The US government appealed that order late on 13 November. The government has argued that it is trying to prevent data on American TikTok users from being shared with China’s authoritarian government, which TikTok says it would never do. The government also contends that its efforts are aimed at protecting American users’ data, and not at closing off informational exchanges.
The Commerce Department said the shutdown order wouldn’t go into effect "pending further legal developments".
Earlier this week, TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance asked a federal appeals court in Washington to overturn an order by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US that ByteDance divest the company.
The Treasury Department, which oversees Cfius, said that it "remains focused on reaching a resolution of the national security risks" from TikTok. In a later statement, it said Cfius had granted ByteDance a 15-day extension of the original 12 November to give it time to comply with the executive order.
In its recent filing in the appeals court case, ByteDance submitted a fourth version of its proposal for addressing US security concerns. The proposal called for creating a new entity, wholly owned by Oracle, Walmart and existing US investors in ByteDance, that would be responsible for handling TikTok’s US user data and content moderation. That US entity would come in addition to a TikTok Global unit, according to people familiar with the matter.
