Mr. Trump suggested that TikTok should be allowed to continue operating in the United States for some time

Us President-elect Donald Trump has hinted that he is in favour of allowing the short video sharing app TikTok to continue operating in the US, at least for a while.

Speaking in Phoenix on Sunday (December 22) at the annual event of the conservative youth group Turning Point USA, Trump said that during the presidential election, short videos he shared on TikTok received billions of views.

Trump said, "I think we have to start thinking about it, because we do have videos on TikTok, and they're very well received, billions of views."

"They showed me a chart that broke the record. It was great. I looked at the chart and I said, maybe we should keep this thing for a while."

This is one of the strongest signals yet that Trump is against pulling TikTok out of the US market. TikTok CEO Zouzi Zhou met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago Resort in Florida last Monday (16th).

The Biden administration signed a TikTok bill passed by the House and Senate in April, giving TikTok's Chinese parent company ByteDance until Jan. 19, 2025, to sell TikTok's U.S. assets or face a nationwide ban.

Bytedance is trying to overturn TikTok and has appealed to the US Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Wednesday to hear a case on whether the forced sale of TikTok is unconstitutional, setting oral arguments for January 10, 2025. Separately, two senators, one Democrat and one Republican, asked Biden on Thursday to delay TikTok's effective date by 90 days from January 19, 2025.