Will Donald Trump save TikTok from exiting the US?

Happy New Year. Theresa. You know, I remember when TikTok was just emerging and people were trying it out for the first time and I had friends tell me this algorithm, it hits different, you know, this platform, it knows what I want to watch before I even know I want to watch it. Benji, TikTok has 1 billion active monthly users, but 170 million of them are in America. Just how big is the app in the US?

Well, I'm one of those users and like you, I feel, I feel like the algorithm knows me better than I know myself. And and the reason, I guess like any social media application is that the more that we use it, the more we scroll and scroll, the more the algorithm learns about us, can, can give us content that we think we're after. And that's an experience not only that I have, but as you say, millions across the United States.

Just some stats on that. American adults spend an average of almost 1 hour per day. On TikTok, and that of course means that TikTok is able to reach revenue in the many, many billions in the US, 16 billion in 2023. Obviously we have to wait for 2024 figures. And the thing about TikTok that makes it so interesting for not just users but also creators on it is that there is an opportunity for them to make money too, right? So if you are creating output as an influencer, you can earn.

Tiny amounts per 1000 views, but if you're getting millions of views, that adds up. The last thing I'd just say in terms of TikTok's influence, obviously there's the money, obviously there's the influences. There is the political element as well, and we are gonna talk about Donald Trump, but you know, his presence on TikTok, both directly and indirectly, him posting from his account or right wing influences putting up the sort of content that that can draw in a key audience.

That obviously was huge during the US election campaign here. So the app is big on a number of fronts. It would be really big, therefore, if it's banned. But hey, it's happened before. It's happened in other places like India, and it could, it could well happen in the US as well. Yeah, we're going to dive deeper into that. But first, Olivia, TikTok, not available in China, but there is an equivalent called Douyin. Did I pronounce that correctly?

Doing Doyin, OK. ByteDance owns both of these apps. How similar are they? Well, we, we sometimes hear people refer to TikTok as the international version of Douyin, which actually translates to a shaking sound or Douyin as the Chinese version of TikTok,

that's quite understandable. They are very similar, both, you know, originated as short video sharing platforms, they have very similar interfaces, but instead of being the same product, I would actually say they are more like siblings, you know, with the same parent company, but they have their own very distinct personalities and beings for that matter, and I must admit, in the name of very good rigorous research, I have spent quite a bit of time on these two apps more than usual, but I've had

to use two different devices because one of the biggest differences is its availability. So Douyin can only be downloaded when you're on the. Chinese app store, so I have to use my China mobile phone for that. Uh, while TikTok is only available in uh app stores outside of China, in fact, has never been made available on uh Mainland China. Audience wise as well, TikTok has more than 1 billion monthly active users in 150 countries apart from China. Douyin has less, over 700 million users.

But all in China and it's the 2nd most popular social media platform in China after WeChat, but it is the most popular out of the video streaming apps in China. Arguably Douyin has seen greater success with e-commerce, bringing it huge amounts of revenue. There's also this other fun, you know, little difference between Douyin and TikTok. The filter, actually if you try to take a selfie of yourself. is different. You should give it a go and see

how you look. But content-wise, they are two separate apps. What you upload on one platform can't be automatically found on the other. So it's perhaps what's happening behind the scenes that has caused a bit more skepticism even though for users, these are two different apps. Let's get into the politics now. Benji, the argument from the Biden administration. is that the app poses a serious national security threat that China's Communist Party can use it for its political ends.

What exactly is Washington afraid of? It's actually a really difficult question to answer and the reason it's difficult to answer is because from the US government's perspective, their argument, as you say, is about data and national security and therefore it's kind of tough to get down to the details of what they're worried about because so much of it is is redacted.

When they try and put their case forward and when the White House presented their case and that case was upheld by a court here in the US, it was really thin on the ground on those specifics because, well, naturally the government is wary about publicizing sensitive information, but of course, how do you prove your case without actually showing something. But here's kind of the overall idea that the Biden administration is putting forward, which is that TikTok collects.

data on Americans, which, OK, it happens with other social media websites, Facebook or Instagram for example. But what's different with TikTok is that the US government alleges that uh that information can be used by China to influence politics here in America, even to spy on people or inject malicious software into people's devices or phones. Back in 20. 22, Christopher Wray, he's the outgoing director of the FBI.

He told Congress that, and I'm quoting here, the Chinese government could control the algorithm, he says, which could use to be influencing operations and that China angle, of course, coming from the fact that TikTok's owner, Byte Dan is based in Beijing. Now, look, it's important to stress that China denies these sorts of theories.

And much of the risk is is theoretical. But if you look at the rhetoric that has come from many lawmakers in the US, they point to specific examples, one of which is an incident back in 2022, in which ByteDance admitted that some of its employees did access the data of journalists in the West to try to check their locations, see if they were meeting TikTok employees suspected of leaking information to the media. And the last thing on this is that yes, this

app is hugely popular. We were just talking about how many users they are, but there is a notion in the political world here in Washington that TikTok is a danger. That is the political consensus. It is already banned on government devices and even Donald Trump. endorsed a national ban when he was first in the White House. So certainly there is a concern amongst the government and all areas of US government about TikTok and the risks that they see given its association potentially to

the Chinese state. Yeah, and Washington saying, you know what, shed that Chinese ownership or get out, right? I want to pick up on the point of national security, Olivia. What has been China's response to Washington's allegations and just how Chinese is TikTok? That is the big question, but there's also like what Benji mentioned, right? There is the argument and then there's perception as well, and then what do the US lawmakers or the Supreme Court buy?

If you look at TikTok Inc which offers the TikTok app, it is incorporated in California and Delaware. It has its headquarters in Singapore and Los Angeles, and that's the argument that TikTok has tried to use to prove its independence from the Chinese government. It says that it is subject to American laws and not Chinese ones, but perhaps the bigger question here is with TikTok's parent company ByteDance, is it Chinese? To give you some background, ByteDance was founded.

By Chinese entrepreneurs Jiang Yiming and Liang Bo Bo, who went to Nankai University in China's North Tianjin. 43-year-old Zhang Yimming, who hails from Fujian province in the south, has also been named China's richest person in 2024 with a net worth estimated at $49.3 billion. Now he stepped down from his role as ByteDance CEO in 2021 and under that lens, it would seem ByteDance is a Chinese company. So if you were to look at the TikTok website,

it has been trying to distance itself from this. In a section it has where it tries to debunk what it says are myths about TikTok. It says one of these myths is that ByteDance is Chinese owned. It claims that about 60% of the company is owned by global institutional investors and that co-founder Zhang Yiming holds a 20% stake in the company and they say he is a private individual and not part of any state or government entity. ByteDance is based in Beijing, it is incorporated in the

Cayman Islands. It also claims it does not have a single global headquarters and that's where it gets tricky, right? The US authorities say Chinese companies are required to do whatever the Chinese government wants in terms of sharing information, US members of Congress complain about the Chinese government having a golden share.

In ByteDance, but TikTok has refuted this. Under Chinese law, it says that because of media licensing requirements and entity affiliated with the Chinese government owns 1% of a ByteDance subsidiary, but it says that this arrangement is only for specific services in the Chinese market and it has no bearing on its global operations outside of China, including for TikTok. The question though is whether this argument Will be something that the US buys into.

I'm gonna say TikTok. Do you recognize that voice? Yes, that's US President-elect Donald Trump, saying back in June that he would save TikTok. Just before the new year, Mr. Trump filed a request with the Supreme Court to delay the ban. He says he needs some time to find a negotiated resolution and keep in mind Benji, you mentioned this. Mr. Trump was the leader who first put a ban on the table back in 2020. So my question to you is, why is he now

so keen to keep it around? Yeah, he's gone through quite a transformation here, and I, I've just come back off the end of covering the 2024 presidential campaign, which Donald Trump won, of course, and I saw a lot of him and what I've realized is he is, he's an unpredictable man. It can be complicated to work out where he sits on a certain issue. For me though, I think on TikTok it's, it's actually pretty clear cut.

Because the app served him really well during the election, you know, getting the sort of bro vote as it's known, young men especially to engage in his campaign. There's a bit of overlap between the campaign and the tech world. One of his billionaire mega donors, someone called Jeff Yass, he has an investment firm which owns a chunk of TikTok's parent company. We also saw the president-elect recently meet.

The Singaporean CEO of TikTok, and Trump has since argued that the, the timing of this law that we're exploring where TikTok has to be sold, you know, by ByteDance or face a ban, he says that that law interferes with his own ability to manage the United States' foreign policy and national security, not to mention First Amendment rights. I think overall though, this is my theory, which is,

Donald Trump just likes being popular, right? He, he boasts all the time about his biggest crowds, his winning the popular vote, best this, biggest that, being a star on the app, he says that he has a warm spot in his heart for TikTok, and I think that the bottom line is just like he just enjoys the positive attention that TikTok has granted him. He has the unfettered ability.

To spread his message to 1415 million followers. So from Trump's perspective, you know, never mind those pesky national security concerns, which, yeah, he raised in the past, but those don't matter now. TikTok is good for me. I like TikTok, let's keep TikTok. And, and now that he's president again or or soon to be president again. He could try and prevent that ban for that reason, right, casting himself as the platform savior, and I think really

that that that's it, that's the reality. Yeah, and influencers would love him for that, right? OK, so Mr. Trump's appeal, could it work, you know, how likely is the Supreme Court to overturn or pause the ban? That is the million dollar question, and we're gonna find out quite soon because the Supreme Court is holding its hearing on TikTok on January 10th, and if, if it decides to take up the case, first of all, President Biden would have to issue an extension on that deadline

for ByteDance to sell TikTok. Otherwise that expires on the 19th. That's the day before Trump's inauguration. If you're asking to sort of predict what the Supreme Court is gonna do, I think that's less actually to do with the cases in which you're stronger on either side. It's more to do with where the justices lie politically and ideologically. This is a conservative leaning court. Who might agree with TikTok's argument about the constitutional right

to free speech, the First Amendment. It is also though a Trump leaning court. It has ruled in the president elect's favor on a number of matters of late, for instance, granting him presidential immunity. TikTok could also go in front of the court, right, and it could argue that it is practically impossible to ban this app. You know, there was a bill that went through Congress and it suggested that the way that they would do this is they would penalize app stores

or internet providers for hosting versions of the app. I mean, yeah, the US government is, you know, big and important, but good luck imposing that sort of rule on on Apple or or Google, and there'd be huge uproar amongst the public as well, not that that stopped the Supreme Court, so. I don't know. I actually don't know which way this is going to go. We don't even know if the Supreme Court are going to take it up or when

they'd have this decision. And then of course Trump's in the White House and he may decide to intervene as well. So it's going to be a really interesting couple of weeks ahead, I think for TikTok. Definitely, yeah, I want to pick up on that thought in a moment, but Olivia, you know, since the law was passed last year. TikTok said the ban violates First Amendment protections. It's unconstitutional and the Chinese government has called Washington to respect the

market economy, respect fair competition. How much more reactive could Beijing get over this? Oh, with the latest developments, we have seen Chinese media like the China Daily say that the potential reprieve is a positive development, but other than that, the Chinese response has been relatively measured or muted for that fact. If you would just think back to March last year, in the lead up to and just after the US House of Representatives passed the sell or ban bill paving the way for it to be.

Eventually signed into law. In April, China's Foreign Ministry famously called it quote sheer robbers' logic in which it accused the US of trying to snatch from others all the good things that they have, calling it an abuse of national security to bring down competitive companies of other countries, saying that there is no fairness or justice. But since Then there's been a shift in the Chinese government's intensity of response and we've seen that as this ban of

TikTok has become more of a reality. Reports suggest that, you know, after proceedings got going, TikTok chose to take the case to the courts and to let its team in the US, which famously is led by its Singaporean CEO Sho Chuu, he had famously highlighted. his nationality, TikTok choosing to let that team handle the

political lobbying and the legal battle. Questions about ongoing developments relating to the ban in Beijing have been met with answers from Chinese spokespersons just deferring back to their past statements.

And again, it would seem that the Chinese government is trying to show relative restraint now, trying to distance itself or perhaps keep its He quite close to its chest, as Benji mentioned, there's still a lot of uncertainty with what's going to happen, but analysts have also said that, you know, this shouldn't be taken as an indication that China is going to back off or take this lying down. So my question is, do you even think China would allow the sale of

TikTok if it meant staying in America? That seems like a really big ask. Yeah, we haven't really heard directly, you know, from China on what it would do, perhaps because of all these uncertainties, but there have been statements to show that China is not going to let up on this and it is

quite unlikely to let a sale go through. In March 2023, China's Commerce Ministry then outrightly said that it is firmly opposed to a forced sale of TikTok and the tricky part here is with TikTok's algorithm, the ministry. said that the sale or divestiture of TikTok is subject to Chinese laws because it involves technology export and therefore, it is subject to administrative licensing procedures. It also said the Chinese government will make a decision in accordance with

the law. Don't forget that this has been like we've been talking about a long standing issue dating back to Mr. Trump's first term in office where he pushed for a ban on the app in 2020.

amid an escalating China-US tech war, China actually moved to revise its catalog of technologies that are subject to export bans or restrictions, all pointing to targeting TikTok's price data mining algorithm that pushes that content to people that has made it so successful and what all this means is ByteDance may not be able to make a decision of a sale on its own.

And that may also be where the conundrum lies for TikTok, even as it tries to make the argument in case that it does not have ties with the Chinese government. There are few possible scenarios here, right? We talked about letting the sale go through, which would be most unlikely to have. as it would make China look weak, especially as it has framed this as an abuse of national security concerns

by the US. Don't forget that observers are also pointing out that China is very mindful of this domestic audience and how it's perceived as well. Another option some say is for ByteDance to sell its US business without including the platform's algorithm, but the Chinese Commerce Ministry did not respond directly to a question on whether, you know, this could be a possibility, and this was just last month. Observers including uh Carnegie China say.

What's most likely to happen then is that China could block the sale and that would have greater repercussions for China-US ties and could escalate tensions. This would be at the expense of ByteDance's business if it's left unable to operate in the US, which is a key market, and it will be a huge loss for. Talk in terms of revenue as well. But experts asking that this could possibly let China gain political leverage amid

this China-US rivalry. OK, then before we go, Benji, let's fast forward a few days, you know, so say the law is upheld. January 19th comes around, TikTok is banned, but then the day after on January 20th, Donald Trump is inaugurated as president. Could he still intervene at that point and maybe save it? So actually, yes, he could try and there's a couple of things he could do, but they all have problems. If, if we go one by one, firstly, he could ask

Congress to repeal the legislation. So Congress is the, the body that passed this bill. He could go back to them and say, reverse it. It's possible. I mean, he holds both chambers of Congress narrowly, but there would be a big backlash, I think, amongst some of the Sino skeptic representatives on Capitol Hill, as well as arguably some American social media companies. OK, so that's option one. Option two would be to

take executive action. So don't go back to Congress, just go down and ask his Justice Department to effectively abstain from enforcing the law. The issue with that is that the law still remains in effect. And so if you're a company like Apple, even if Donald Trump said don't worry about it, you're still in violation of it. So if you're, if you're the general counsel of Apple, are you really going to just bank on Trump. Truth social post that, yeah, I'm not going to enforce

the law anymore. You're probably not because of the fact that Trump has form of changing his mind, especially on this topic of TikTok. Alternatively, there is this option where he could try to push through that sale from ByteDance, and Donald Trump would love that. He brands himself as Mr. Deal Breaker, Art of the deal. That is Donald Trump. Even if there are potentially buyers in the US, China really reluctant to comply on that front. So.

The options are there, but they have their challenges. And I think that the, the worry, even though there are opportunities, the worry for the Trump administration is that this is more than just an app where people do funny dances, right? The stakes are really high here because whichever way this goes, and there are multiple outcomes and implications, this is clearly going to have consequences for US-China ties. That bilateral relationship between the global superpowers is going to be tested if

a ban is put in place. Beijing could Ma, you know, choose to respond, then this could spill over more widely as part of this tit for tat trade war that is going on between China and the United States. I wouldn't say anything is set in stone. I would say it's massively moving in terms of the parts, and we might not know until, you know. Trump, frankly, has had his last say on this. Yeah, and all the while, some 170 million users in America

counting down the days as they watch things unfold. Things really unclear, but you guys, thank you so much for shedding some light on what could happen in the days ahead. Benji and Olivia really appreciate this. Thank you. Thanks. You can find all the reports from our correspondents on YouTube and on CNA. Asia, and don't forget there are TV episodes of CNA Correspondent every Wednesday at 9:30 p.m. Singapore,

Hong Kong time. I'm Teresa Tang. The team behind this week's episode is Sai Yain, Clara Ong, Christina Robert, and Craig Dale. Join us again for more next week. Take care.