The Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the looming TikTok ban may have corporate consequences far beyond the app’s parent company, impacting American tech giants and the broader U.S. stock market.
With Donald Trump returning to the White House the day after the ban is set to take effect, it remains to be seen if and how the new administration will enforce the law. University of Houston law professor Nikolas Guggenberger said it will be interesting to watch how Trump will act given that he did not sign the ban into law, enforcing it will be an unpopular decision among the app’s 170 million users, and TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew plans to attend his inauguration.
Although the company previously stated it planned to shut down in the U.S. on Sunday, in a video posted to TikTok after the Supreme Court ruling Friday, Chew thanked Trump for his commitment to “finding a solution” that keeps TikTok available in the U.S.
“We are grateful and pleased to have the support of a president who truly understands our platform, one who has used TikTok to express his own thoughts and perspectives, connecting with the world and generating more than 60 billion views of his content in the process,” Chew said. “As you know, we have been fighting to protect the constitutional right of free speech for the more than 170 million Americans who use our platform every day to connect, create, discover and achieve their dreams.”
Enforcement will include U.S. servers dropping support for TikTok
The new administration’s decision on whether and how to enforce the ban will affect many American companies including Oracle, Apple, and Google who could face steep fines of up to $5,000 per user if they were to continue using their servers to host and support the app.
Guggenberger said the app will be removed from app stores but remain on the phones of users who previously downloaded TikTok. What the app will look like when opened is unclear. U.S. servers will most likely stop serving the company, he said, and it is uncertain to what extent the app will continue to function properly.
Without intervention, Guggenberger said “the medium to long-term result is that the app will certainly eventually become dysfunctional” because TikTok will no longer be able to distribute updates through the app store.
