Wants to find a solution

Trump asks Supreme Court for TikTok stay

A few weeks before a possible ban of the video platform TikTok from the app stores of major US corporations, US President-elect Donald Trump asked the US Supreme Court on Friday for a stay of the law that obliges TikTok's Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell the service. 

"Given the novelty and difficulty of this case, the court should consider suspending the statutory deadline," Trump's lawyers wrote.

Users spied on?
This would give more time to clarify these issues and give Trump the opportunity to find a political solution. The background to this is a law passed by the administration of outgoing US President Joe Biden, which gives ByteDance until January 19 to sell TikTok in the US. Otherwise, the video platform will be banned from the app stores of US companies Apple and Google.

The reason for this is that US authorities are accusing ByteDance of misusing the app in the service of the Chinese leadership in order to spy on users, which the video platform denies. TikTok is particularly popular with young people and has around 170 million users in the US.

Trump wants to find a political solution
Trump himself, who had sought to take similarly harsh action against TikTok during his first term in office, recently changed course. There must be competition, he recently told the Bloomberg news agency.

In the brief filed on Friday, Trump's lawyer John Sauer explains that the former and future head of state is not taking a position on the legal aspects of the case. Instead, he "respectfully" requests that the deadline be suspended to give Trump the opportunity for a political solution after he takes office on January 20.