- President Trump signed an executive order on Monday giving TikTok 75 more days to operate in the US.
- The move came after TikTok briefly shut down to comply with a divest-or-ban law.
- Legal analysts say Trump’s order may not be enough to bring TikTok back to US app stores.
TikTok is back online for existing US users after briefly going dark over the weekend to comply with a divest-or-ban law.
But it’s still gone from US app stores. The app may face an uphill battle to get back there despite President Trump’s executive order on Monday granting TikTok and its partners 75 more days to operate without drawing the ire of the Justice Department.
Trump’s executive order directed the attorney general to send a letter to TikTok’s service providers telling them they would not face liability related to the law, which required TikTok’s owner, ByteDance, to separate from its US assets by January 19. ByteDance did not follow through on that requirement.
Even with Trump’s assurance of non-enforcement, the general counsels at Apple or Google’s parent company Alphabet may be too risk-averse to add TikTok back to their stores, legal analysts told Business Insider.
The divest-or-ban law, if enforced, could impose hundreds of billions of dollars in fines on service providers that don’t cut ties with TikTok and other ByteDance apps, a terrifying prospect for any company lawyer. A letter from the attorney general promising they won’t act on the law may not cut it.
“If I were the GC of Alphabet or Apple, I don’t think a letter would assuage my fears,” said G.S. Hans, a clinical professor of law at Cornell Law School who last year joined an amicus brief opposing the divest-or-ban law.
However, he added: “The heads of those companies may differ with their legal counsel and potentially even override them.”
The executive order contains language that might raise red flags for in-house lawyers, too, said Matthew Schettenhelm, a litigation and policy analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.
In section three of the executive order, for example, the document states that nothing in the order shall “impair or otherwise affect” the “authority granted by law to an executive department or agency,” which seems to undercut the idea that the attorney general would never take action under any circumstance, Schettenhelm said.
“The whole thing is a recipe for a legal mess,” Schettenhelm said. “It, therefore, shouldn’t make service providers feel comfortable about violating a law tied to such massive liability exposure.”
While legal teams at Apple and Google may not be rushing to bring TikTok back to their stores, the stakes for TikTok are different. The company needs to be in app stores to sign up new users and send technical updates to its existing ones. Without those updates, the quality of its app would likely degrade over time.
Apple and Google may still decide to play ball
Other legal analysts were more bullish about the possibility that TikTok could return to app stores following Trump’s order.
Aram Gavoor, associate dean for academic affairs at the George Washington University Law School, thought the order would offer an effective “safe harbor” to TikTok’s partners, including the app stores. He was not concerned about the apparent contradiction in the third section of the order, describing that language as a “boilerplate.”
“Once that attorney general letter is transmitted and received, you have a safe harbor to continue hosting that app on your store,” Gavoor said. “It’s almost like the IRS issuing a no-action letter for a taxpayer within a given tax year. This conduct is not unlawful, and therefore, that’s a basis upon which you can engage in continued lawful conduct.”
Apple and Google have not indicated yet whether they will add TikTok back to their app stores after Trump’s order. Neither company responded to a request for comment; Google earlier declined to comment.
This weekend, as it removed TikTok and other ByteDance apps from its store, Apple wrote in a statement that it was “obligated to follow the laws in the jurisdictions where it operates,” which included complying with the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.
The White House and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
