Trump says 'I'm for TikTok' as potential US ban looms

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said he supports TikTok even as a potential ban looms if Chinese-parent company ByteDance fails to divest the short video app's U.S. assets.

"I’m for TikTok because you need competition. If you don’t have TikTok, you have Facebook and Instagram," Trump told Bloomberg BusinessWeek in an interview posted Tuesday. Trump previously called TikTok, which is used by 170 million Americans, a threat but then joined TikTok last month.

Trump, who has criticized Meta Platforms-owned Facebook and Instagram for suspending him for two years in the wake of the deadly Capitol Hill riot on Jan. 6, 2021, told an interviewer in June he would never support a TikTok ban.

TikTok declined to comment. As president, Trump tried to ban TikTok and Chinese-owned WeChat in 2020 but the move was blocked by the courts. In June 2021, President Joe Biden withdrew a series of Trump-era executive orders that sought to ban WeChat and TikTok.

Trump holds a majority stake in social media company Trump Media and Technology Group that operates rival network Truth Social. Trump Media has a $7 billion market cap despite quarterly revenue of around $770,000 - comparable to two U.S. Starbucks shops.

In September, a U.S. appeals court will hold oral arguments on legal challenges to a new law requiring China-based ByteDance to divest TikTok's U.S. assets by Jan. 19 or face a ban.

The hearing before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will put the fate of TikTok in the middle of the final weeks of the 2024 presidential election.

Signed by Biden on April 24, the law gives ByteDance until Jan. 19 to sell TikTok or face a ban. The White House says it wants to see Chinese-based ownership ended on national security grounds, but not a ban on TikTok. Biden's campaign joined TikTok in February.

Driven by worries among U.S. lawmakers that China could access data on Americans or spy on them with the app, the measure was passed overwhelmingly in Congress in April just weeks after being introduced.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)