The Trump administration isn’t giving up on ratcheting tensions between the US and China as it has appealed a court order that halted the US from blocking TikTok use in the United States.
A federal judge earlier this month made a ruling that prevented authorities from fully implementing its restrictions against the popular video app but a new appeal by the Trump administration challenges the Dec. 7 preliminary injunction from US District Court Judge Carl Nichols, which prevented the US Department of Commerce from enforcing rules that would have made it illegal for infrastructure companies to carry TikTok’s network traffic.
That ruling followed an earlier injunction that prevented the Commerce Department from banning downloads of TikTok from US app stores.
US President Donald Trump has accused TikTok of posing a national security risk because its Chinese owner, ByteDance, hands over TikTok’s user data to the Chinese government. TikTok has denied the claim and said TikTok stores US user data in Virginia and Singapore, making it impossible for China to ask for the data.
TikTok has been trying to sell the US version of the company to US investors, such as Oracle (ORCL) and Walmart (WMT). But that deal has not been finalized.
Earlier in December, the US government declined to extend a deadline it had set for ByteDance to sell off the app. But it also decided not to enforce an executive order requiring the sale.
It’s not clear whether the legal fights against the app will continue when President-elect Joe Biden takes office next month.
