A United State Federal Judge ended trump administration’s executive order to ban downloads of Chinese-owned video-sharing platform TikTok from U.S. mobile-app stores at 11:59pm on Sunday.
US District Judge Carl Nichols in Washington in a concise order released the preliminary injunction to block the App from taking its effect as soon as possible on Monday (Sept 28).
The Commerce Department said in a statement it “will comply with the injunction and has taken immediate steps to do so”.
The statement made by the Commerce Department which defended the TikTok order and Trump’s executive order demanding owner ByteDance divest its TikTok US operations, without specifying the government approval.
The prohibition shows at a time when negotiations begun to hit out terms of a preliminary deal.
Also, Walmart Inc and Oracle Corp to take stakes in a new company, TikTok Global, that would oversee US operations after Trump has said he had given the deal his “blessing”.
ByteDance removes its TikTok U.S. operations within 90 days, which declares a say over any TikTok deal.
TikTok was pleased with the prohibition and stated “will also maintain our ongoing dialogue with the government to turn our proposal, which the president gave his preliminary approval to last week, into an agreement.”
John E. Hall, a lawyer for TikTok, said earlier on Sunday that the ban was “unprecedented” and “irrational”.
“How does it make sense to impose this app store ban tonight when there are negotiations under way that might make it unnecessary?” Hall asked during a 90-minute hearing. “This is just punitive. This is just a blunt way to whack the company … There is simply no urgency here.”
Negotiations continue over the terms of the agreement and to resolve concerns from Washington and Beijing.
“I think it is in line with morality, justice and common sense,” Hu Xijin, the editor in chief of the Global Times newspaper said on Twitter on Monday.
Chinese state media have said they see no reason for China to approve the deal, describing it as based on “bullying and extortion”.
Trump’s administration contends that TikTok poses national security concerns as personal data collected on 100 million Americans who use the app could be obtained by China’s government.
The US government’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) will also review any deal to be placed.
The Justice Department said a preliminary injunction would be “interfering with a formal national security judgment of the president; altering the landscape with respect to ongoing CFIUS negotiations; and continuing to allow sensitive and valuable user information to flow to ByteDance with respect to all new users.”
Another US judge, in Pennsylvania, on Saturday rejected a bid by three TikTok content creators to block the ban, while a judge in California has blocked a similar order from taking effect that would ban Tencent Holdings’ WeChat from US app stores.
