It is unclear how the president-elect will approach the Chinese tech industry.
TikTok is about to outlast President Trump. Now, the company could become an early test of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s stance toward Chinese tech companies. Mr. Trump demanded last year that TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, sell the viral video app. He said TikTok raised urgent national security concerns, on the grounds that the Chinese government could get access to users’ data. The dispute disrupted the app’s stratospheric rise. ByteDance and the Trump administration are still talking, people familiar with the matter said. But it looks increasingly likely that the fate of the app will not be decided by Mr. Trump, who announced his demands with great fanfare over the summer, backed away from a deal he approved a month later, and then turned his attention elsewhere. Instead, TikTok’s future will fall into the hands of Mr. Biden, who has said little about the company or the broader, bipartisan concerns about the growing influence of Chinese technology companies. On Tuesday, the U.S. government agreed to extend a deadline in a court battle over restrictions targeting TikTok. The new deadline is Feb.18 — almost a month after Mr. Biden takes office. “My gut is that they’re hoping to ride this out, and hope that this is on the back burner and they can kind of skirt by under the radar,” Samm Sacks, a fellow at the think tank New America, said about ByteDance’s approach to the final days of the Trump administration. Mr. Biden has said America must be tougher toward Beijing, calling China’s president, Xi Jinping, a “thug.” But he has offered few details about how that approach would play out. He has said only that he will try to have a more consistent policy toward the country — in contrast to Mr. Trump’s patchwork aggression — while pressuring it on issues like its theft of American intellectual property. A spokesman for Mr. Biden’s transition team declined to comment on the president-elect’s plans. TikTok declined to comment. A spokeswoman for the Treasury Department said in a statement that the risks associated with the app “have not changed, and the order requiring the divestiture stands.” The government has been working with ByteDance and others to resolve the concerns, the spokeswoman said, adding, “That work continues, and the attorney general is authorized to take any steps necessary to enforce the order.” TikTok is far from the only company with a stake in Mr.
