TikTok Faces U.S. Ban After Losing Bid to Overturn New Law
The New York Times
The law will ban the video app in the United States by Jan. 19 if its owner, ByteDance, does not sell it to a non-Chinese company.
TikTok is one step closer to disappearing in the United States after a panel of federal judges on Friday unanimously upheld a new law that could lead to the banning of the popular Chinese-owned video app by mid-January.
The three judges, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, denied TikTok’s petition to overturn the law. The decision could be a death blow for the app in one of its biggest markets. More than 170 million Americans use TikTok to entertain and inform themselves, turning it into a cultural phenomenon. The looming loss of the app in the United States had spurred concern from free speech advocates and from the creators whose income depends on TikTok.
The decision also raises new questions for President-elect Donald J. Trump, who has repeatedly signaled his support for the app, but who doesn’t have a clear path for rescuing it under the new law, which is scheduled to go into effect the day before his inauguration.
The law, signed in April, requires TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the app to a non-Chinese company by Jan. 19 or face a ban in the United States. TikTok, which has raised national security concerns among politicians since 2020 because of its ties to China, has said a sale is impossible, in part because it would be blocked by the Chinese government. The company argued that the law unfairly singled out TikTok and that a ban would infringe on the First Amendment rights of American users.
The judges disagreed with TikTok’s argument. They said the law was “carefully crafted to deal with only control by a foreign adversary,” and didn’t run afoul of the First Amendment. “The government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary’s ability to gather data on people in the United States,” the judges wrote on Friday.
Pat Gelsinger stepped down after nearly four years at the helm of the onetime highflying company, Intel said Monday.
New rules prohibit the sale of certain types of chips and equipment to China, in an effort to close loopholes and cement the Biden administration’s legacy in countering the U.S. rival.
The company, facing slumping sales, announced that Carlos Tavares would step down immediately and that a search for a new chief was underway.
Business owners say card transaction fees are a growing monthly expense, one often passed to consumers. They’re cheering efforts to lower them.
Data on spending this week shows consumers are being drawn to discounts. Online Black Friday sales picked up at a faster pace this year than in-store shopping, Mastercard reported.