The famous Chinese short video application TikTok has been struggling to stay in business in the US ever since President Donald Trump issued an executive order threatening to ban the app citing security concerns.
Its parent company ByteDance was given an ultimatum to divest itself of “any tangible or intangible assets or property, wherever located, used to enable or support ByteDance’s operation of the TikTok application in the United States.”
The Trump administration’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States set a deadline for 12th November in response to which TikTok applied for a 30-day extension that was allowed for in the CFIUS’ order. However, it was not communicated by any of the other parties. Moreover, the CFIUS has been quiet about the matter for weeks now.
Thus, TikTok has filed a petition in a US Court of Appeals calling for a review of actions by CFIUS. The company is not sure what would actually happen if the deadline passed.
In a statement, a TikTok spokesperson said,
For a year, TikTok has actively engaged with CFIUS in good faith to address its national security concerns, even as we disagree with its assessment. In the nearly two months since the President gave his preliminary approval to our proposal to satisfy those concerns, we have offered detailed solutions to finalize that agreement – but have received no substantive feedback on our extensive data privacy and security framework. Facing continual new requests and no clarity on whether our proposed solutions would be accepted, we requested the 30-day extension that is expressly permitted in the 14th August order. Today, with the 12th November CFIUS deadline imminent and without an extension in hand, we have no choice but to file a petition in court to defend our rights and those of our more than 1,500 employees in the US. We remain committed to working with the Administration — as we have all along — to resolve the issues it has raised, but our legal challenge today is a protection to ensure these discussions can take place.
