Senators Push Bill to Give China’s ByteDance More Time to Sell TikTok
Three Democratic senators urged the Trump administration March 24 to work with Congress if it needs more time to find a resolution that complies with a U.S. law requiring China’s ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a ban on the popular social media application.
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In a letter to President Donald Trump, Sens. Edward Markey, D-Mass., Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., and Cory Booker, D-N.J., noted that they’ve introduced a bill that would give ByteDance until Oct. 16 to find a buyer (see 2501140005). A law enacted last year gave ByteDance until Jan. 19 to complete a deal, though a Trump executive order directed DOJ to hold off until April 5 on enforcing the law (see 2501210051).
"This prescribed non-enforcement of the TikTok ban was not only unlawful but also raised serious questions about TikTok’s future, as the law imposes liability -- up to $850 billion -- on companies for facilitating TikTok’s continued operations in the United States, such as Oracle for providing cloud computing services to TikTok and Apple and Google for distributing TikTok in their respective app stores," the senators wrote. "If you need additional time to complete a deal, we urge you to direct Senate Republicans to pass our legislation and provide the companies with legal certainty to keep TikTok online and in the app stores over the next few months."