TikTok gets a green light to continue to operate in the U.S., Commerce Department says

In a win for ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, the Commerce Department announced yesterday that TikTok can continue to operate in the U.S. The decision concludes a 2 month-long ban on the company.

Earlier this week, ByteDance filed a petition in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit seeking clarity around whether or not it can move forward with a 20% minority stake sale to Oracle and Walmart.

However, TikTok’s deal for the minority stake sale never receives approval from Beijing. While the Commerce Department said it will abide by a temporary injunction that stopped the government from effectively shutting down TikTok in the U.S., its order did not address the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) mandate demanding TikTok sell its U.S. assets.

Back in September, Judge Carl Nichols of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia issued an injunction blocking the order from the Trump administration that would have banned TikTok from being downloaded from the U.S. app stores. However, the judge did not block a much broader ban set to come into effect on Nov. 12 in the U.S., which could effectively make TikTok unusable.

On September 18, the U.S. Commerce Department announced that it would ban U.S. business transactions with Chinese-owned social apps WeChat and TikTok effective Sunday, Sept. 20, 2020.

TikTok, known in China as Douyin, is a popular video-sharing social networking service owned by Chinese company ByteDance, a Beijing-based Internet technology company founded in 2012 by Zhang Yiming.