App stores unconvinced by Trump's TikTok ban pause, which may itself be on shaky legal ground

Analysis President Trump's executive order stalling the enforcement of the TikTok ban in the United States has created legal uncertainty for companies hosting or distributing the app. To further confuse the matter, it's not even clear that Trump's decree is within his power to issue or enforce. 

The executive order, which Trump issued Monday, puts a 75-day pause on PFACAA – the law requiring China's ByteDance to sell TikTok to a US government-approved buyer or have the app banned in America. This delay is supposed to give Team Trump "an opportunity to determine the appropriate course forward.

PFACAA, or Protecting Americans from the Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act to give its full name, was passed by Congress in 2024 after Trump himself started the ball rolling on a TikTok ban in 2020, calling for the app to be blocked in the US on national security grounds.

Today, it turns out TikTok is quite popular among younger voters, and the White House wants to work out a deal that will keep the app of twerking teens available in the US albeit without the possibility of Beijing using the software to snoop on millions – namely by putting the application in the hands of a buyer approved by Uncle Sam and the Chinese government.

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