Prof. Alan Rozenshtein Quoted by Fast Company About Possible TikTok Ban in the Trump Administration

Professor Alan Rozenshtein was quoted in Fast Company about whether the Trump Administration will seek to repeal the law banning TikTok unless it’s divested from its Chinese parent company. According to Prof. Rozenshtein, If Trump were to aim to protect TikTok, he has options. The main mechanism to enforce the ban would involve civil penalties. Trump could direct the Justice Department to avoid penalizing the platform, internet service providers, and app stores for keeping the TikTok active. That likely would only be a Band-Aid solution, potentially putting the app at risk in the 2028 election. A more definitive approach could be for Trump to use the language of the law to his power. H.R. 815 prohibits distributing, maintaining, updating, or providing internet hosting services for an application controlled by a foreign adversary. But companies who have executed “a qualified divestiture determined by the President” aren’t impacted. Prof. Rozenshtein said, “Could Trump just announce that ByteDance has done a qualified divestment of TikTok, even if ByteDance has not done a qualified divestment of TikTok? It’s not clear that anybody would have standing to sue.”