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U.S. flails against TikTok's latest CFIUS deadline update
The U.S. government has given the TikTok video sharing site another reprimand, but it's not exactly clear if the new deadline extension would be applied or what the sanctions will be.
On Friday, the Trump Administration Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) released a notice offering TikTok a new deadline for either selling or spinning off its US business: 27 November. However it is not clear what legal power CFIUS will have to take action until the day has come, as the Council is already bound by an order imposed by a federal court in Pennsylvania on 30 October.
It's the newest surprise in an incredibly complicated case that began in the summer. Trump said in August that TikTok and its parent firm, ByteDance based in China, posed a national security danger to the US and released an order compelling TikTok to sell its US business. Trump's order would have blocked all U.S. transactions with ByteDance, forcing ByteDance to destroy all TikTok data from U.S. users.
The administration also claimed that TikTok had to report to CFIUS after all the data had been destroyed and asked ByteDance to destroy any data obtained from the TikTok predecessor software Musical.ly that the organization had acquired in 2017.
On September 18, the US Department of Commerce released an order to restrict downloads of the US software. But a day later, the president said he had accepted in principle Oracle's offer to become TikTok's trusted tech partner. The agreement called for the formation of a new company, TikTok Global, which will be headquartered in the US and taking over processing and storage for all US-based TikTok users.
That deal was in limbo, though and TikTok said earlier this week that he had gotten no substantive input from the Trump administration for some time. The corporation lodged a motion for a 30-day extension of the initial CFIUS date of 12 November.
On Thursday, the Commerce Department released an unpublished rule that the Government is compliant with the provisions of the order of that court. Its ban on TikTok transactions has been ordered and will not come into practice until more regulatory changes have taken place.
Since the government is directed to take action against TikTok, it is not clear why an extension of CFIUS was required at this point. Yet it is more and more likely that the future of the app will not be determined by the new administration; at the very least, it seems that the involvement of the Trump administration in the matter has waned as it works on other matters.
TikTok did not respond immediately to a request for comments on Friday.
