TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is expected to attend president-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20 — one day after his app is set to be banned from the U.S., according to multiple reports. The New York Times was the first outlet to report the news late Wednesday night.
Chew will join a number of other major tech execs at the inauguration, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, X and Tesla boss Elon Musk, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The 43-year-old Chew will have a prominent spot sitting on the dais while Trump is sworn in, just like the other tech CEOs, the Times reported.
His attendance comes after Trump has signaled on multiple occasions he wants to keep TikTok around, despite the looming ban. Trump said last year he would like to “save” TikTok, and he is weighing an executive order that would overturn the popular app’s ban. The Biden administration is also “exploring options” to keep the app around. TikTok has said it has 170 million monthly American users.
Trump initially supported banning TikTok during his first term in office, before changing his tune in the last year. President Biden signed the law banning TikTok last April, which called for the app to be removed from Apple and Google’s app stores on Jan. 19 unless its parent company, Beijing-based ByteDance, sells its American operations. The Biden Administration appears to have changed its mind.
The chief concern U.S. lawmakers say they have with TikTok is that it could double as a spyware app for the Chinese communist government; TikTok, per Chinese law, is required to share user data if asked to do so.
ByteDance has indicated it is unwilling to sell the app. TikTok said it plans on shutting down the app in the States on Sunday, barring a last minute reversal of the ban. The U.S. Supreme Court is weighing the legality of the ban, but a decision is not expected by Sunday, and based on a hearing last week, the court does not appear inclined to overturn the law banning the app.
