White House Opens TikTok Account Amid Push For US Takeover

The White House opened an account on TikTok on Tuesday despite moves early this year to ban the Chinese platform in the United States.

The account has been set up without any news being revealed yet on whether China will agree to sell the popular video-sharing app to companies in the United States.

US lawmakers passed a law requiring TikTok to be sold amid bipartisan security concerns in Washington about the Chinese government accessing its user data and using the app for disinformation campaigns. However, the Biden Administration left it to Trump to enforce the law, given a Supreme Court challenge against the move and the fact Trump was set to take office just days later.

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But President Trump was said to have changed his stance on the platform since the election, believing it won him support from young voters and helped to defeat his Democrat rival Kamala Harris.

The US leader still has a personal account on TikTok, with more than 15 million followers, although he has not put a post on it since November 5, the date of the election.

Trump has been working on a deal for US investors to buy the app from TikTok‘s Chinese parent, ByteDance, but Beijing looks to have stymied any takeover – or may have been waiting to use it as a bargaining tool for leverage in its fight against US tariffs.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in late July that if China does not approve a US buy-up of TikTok’s operations in America, the app “will go dark in the US.”

‘I am your voice’

In the meantime, the White House now appears to want to use the short video app to spread messages from or about the President to the 170 million Americans said to use the app.

The launch of the White House account was accompanied by video footage of the President with Trump proclaiming: “Every day I wake up determined to deliver a better life for people all across this nation. I am your voice.”

As the account went live, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “The Trump administration is committed to communicating the historic successes President Trump has delivered to the American people with as many audiences and platforms as possible.”