After months of uncertainty surrounding TikTok’s future, President Trump announced on Friday that President Xi Jinping has agreed on a deal to keep TikTok running in the U.S. However, few specifics about the deal have been released.
Jim Johnston, a partner in the Advertising + Marketing Practice Group at Davis+Gilbert, was extensively quoted in The Hill discussing the TikTok divest-or-ban law.
Notably, the Trump administration has a lot of flexibility in deciding what counts as a “qualified divestiture” under the law, said Jim.
“That’s the portion of the statute that gives the administration its greatest latitude, and I think we’ve seen over the last nine months that if this administration has latitude, it’s going to exercise it to achieve its aims,” Jim explained. “I don’t think there is much that Congress would be able to do if the administration made a determination that the divestiture sufficiently brought the app outside of Chinese control, regardless of whether or not there’s an ongoing financial interest.”
Jim also compared the shifting TikTok talks to past trade negotiations, noting a pattern of announced agreements and moved deadlines. “This seems very evocative of all the various tariffs negotiations, where agreements were announced and then reneged, and deadlines set and deadlines moved.”
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