When former President Donald Trump issued an August 2020 executive order banning U.S. companies from doing business with China-based ByteDance, which owns TikTok, the only way to circumvent the ban and allow U.S. users access to the popular app would have been through selling the app to an American company. The executive order had effectively banned the app, stymying advertisers' ability to work with TikTok and app stores' ability to sell it.
As Microsoft and Walmart vied for the app, federal courts stepped up and blocked Trump's executive order. The Biden administration rightly chose not to appeal, allowing TikTok's some 100 million U.S. users to continue using the app. For eight months, the new administration seemed to be at a reasonable impasse: Though not dismissive of the national security concerns that rankled Trump and his advisers, it refrained from making any drastic moves without giving the matter further thought. Better still, it refrained from engaging in the type of America-first corporate meddling that Trump had wrongly sought.
