US Commerce Department Won’t Enforce TikTok Shutdown Order

The US Commerce Department has signaled it will not enforce the order to shutdown and ban TikTok.

The Trump administration has been trying to force Chinese-owned TikTok to offload the American portion of its business to an American company. Oracle, partnering with Walmart, emerged as the leading candidate, although the terms of the deal were not what Trump had stipulated.

Rather than taking full ownership, the terms of the deal stipulated that Oracle would take a 20% stake. In the meantime, China indicated it may not approve the deal as it doesn’t want to be seen as weak, giving up one of its star companies.

As the involved parties continued to negotiate, however, TikTok filed with a US court of appeal to have the order forcing a sale overturned. The company cited the extraordinary efforts it had gone through to comply, only to hear radio silence from the Trump administration.

Now the Commerce Department has said “it wouldn’t enforce its order that would have effectively forced the Chinese-owned TikTok video-sharing app to shut down, in the latest sign of trouble for the Trump administration’s efforts to turn it into a U.S. company,” according to The Wall Street Journal.

It remains to be seen how the TikTok saga will ultimately turn out, and what impact a Biden presidency could have on the deal.