The answer to whether President-elect Donald J. Trump can — or will — save TikTok from an upcoming ban is unclear.
Mr. Trump, who takes office the day after the Chinese-owned app is scheduled to be banned on Sunday, has previously promised to spare the social media platform. He’s also considered an executive order aimed at allowing TikTok to continue operating in the United States.
But on Friday, the president-elect took a noncommittal tone on his own social media platform, Truth Social.
“The Supreme Court decision was expected, and everyone must respect it,” Mr. Trump posted. “My decision on TikTok will be made in the not too distant future, but I must have time to review the situation. Stay tuned!”
The law upheld by the Supreme Court requires TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app or face a ban. As part of that, app stores, like Apple and Google, are required to stop offering TikTok for downloads. The law also forbids cloud computing companies from serving the app.
It is unclear if an executive order by Mr. Trump could effectively halt that kind of ban. Legal experts said he could direct the Justice Department not to enforce the law, or delay enforcement for a set period, but how such an executive order would fare if challenged in court was uncertain.
“You could have a policy not to enforce this ban,” said Ryan Calo, a professor at the University of Washington School of Law, who was part of a group of legal scholars who urged the Supreme Court to overturn the TikTok ban.
That maneuver would be complicated by the fact that Mr. Trump would have to convince Apple, Google and other companies that work with TikTok that there was no risk that they would be punished for violating a law that was already on the books.
The law also gives the president the ability to extend the deadline for a sale, only if there is “significant progress” toward a deal that would put TikTok in the hands of a non-Chinese owner, also requiring that the deal be possible to complete inside of the 90-day length of the extension. It is unclear exactly how that extension would work if Mr. Trump tried to deploy it after the ban had already taken effect.
TikTok maintained throughout its court challenge to the law that such a sale was impossible in part because of the time frame set out in the law. A group led by Frank McCourt, a billionaire who made money in real estate, has mounted a bid to buy the app in recent months.
Mr. Trump has a third option: appealing to Congress to reverse a law that overwhelmingly received bipartisan approval just last year.