- On Sunday, TikTok and several US tech companies ignored a bill to ban TikTok at the instigation of Donald Trump.
- Trump was not president at the time. After becoming president, he signed an order to suspend the ban.
- Does Trump have that power? It is unclear. This is a problem for technology companies.
Here’s a 2025 conundrum for Big Tech companies: Are they following the president’s orders? Or do they follow the law?
That’s what companies like Apple, Google and Oracle are grappling with after a chaotic weekend that saw TikTok voluntarily shut down in the US, then reopen less than a day later, claiming that “President Trump” said it was okay to do that. .
A few problems with that argument: Donald Trump wasn’t president of the United States this weekend — Joe Biden was still in the White House. And yes: Trump immediately signed an executive order after he became president again on Monday telling TikTok and other tech companies to ignore a law that says TikTok can’t operate in the U.S. while it’s owned by a Chinese company . But it’s not clear how much weight Trump’s order carries.
So in the very near term, lawyers and tech company executives must decide whether they’re willing to take Trump at his word, or whether they need additional assurances.
For now, it appears that Oracle, controlled by Larry Ellison, a Trump supporter, is going along with Trump’s assurances and providing cloud services that are keeping TikTok running in the US. Apple and Google, which used to distribute TikTok through their own app stores, don’t seem convinced: TikTok disappeared from their stores on Sunday and has yet to return. This means US users can have all the TikTok they want, but it prevents TikTok from updating the app for maintenance and repairs — something that could eventually cause problems. (I have sought comment from Oracle. Google declined to comment, and Apple did not respond to requests for comment.)
A possible one for Google and Apple: Trump has ordered his attorney general, who seems likely to be Pam Bondi, to send letters to Apple, Google and other providers giving them the all-clear to ignore the law. But Bondi is not yet attorney general, even as Apple et al. get that letter, it’s not clear if it will be enough to satisfy them.
I won’t get into the weeds about the nature of executive orders versus laws — or whether Trump’s claim that he can temporarily overturn a law due to national security concerns would hold up in court. Suffice it to say, there’s no clarity on any of this: Even Trump allies like Sen. Tom Cotton and House Speaker Mike Johnson have issued statements that appear to contradict Trump’s statements.
The point is, no one can say, with a straight face, that they have 100% confidence that the law, overwhelmingly passed by Congress last year and upheld by a unanimous Supreme Court decision last week, is mandatory. This is an amazing place for us.
It’s also not one we can fully relate to Trump. In his final days in office, Biden also said he would not implement the law he signed last year — though he did so through anonymous officials speaking to reporters, and eventually his press secretary, rather than through a official order. At the same time, some Democrats who voted for the bill in the spring, such as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, spent the last few days arguing that the ban in the sell-or-ban law they passed should be delayed.
But Trump is taking the uncertainty and adding to it: In social media statements and a press conference he held Monday, he appeared to suggest that the U.S. government itself could end up owning TikTok. Or maybe it would be the American companies that own half of the operation. He also argued that Chinese ownership of TikTok really doesn’t matter, as the US already uses many other things made in China, such as “phones”. And that even if China is eavesdropping on American users, it probably doesn’t matter because TikTok is mostly used by children and, “Whether China is going to get information about little kids … I don’t know. To be honest, I think we have problems bigger than them”.
It’s worth watching all three minutes of this clip of the White House press conference, just to understand how Trump seems to be handling this whole thing off the cuff. Imagine running a trillion dollar company and being forced to decipher this:
We’ve been here before, of course. America and the rest of the world spent much of the first Trump administration trying to figure out whether Trump really meant what he was saying, or whether he could actually act on what he was saying and whether he would he changed his mind for a while. later.
One big difference this time: Tech executives, along with many other American leaders, are trying to show Trump how supportive they are of his presidency this time around. But it’s one thing to praise Trump, or cut him a check, or be visible on camera during his inauguration. Believing that saying it is good enough to get you out of trouble for breaking a law—if that’s what actually happens—is whole new ground.