Category: Business

(NEW YORK) — Tech billionaire Elon Musk has kept busy since Election Day, advising President-elect Donald Trump and receiving an appointment to co-lead a new government efficiency commission.

Musk has also found time to promote Trump in scores of posts on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter, which he owns. But such advocacy appears to have driven some X users to seek alternatives.

One such app, Bluesky, has drawn attention as a possible X rival and has amassed a total of 20 million users to date. Its growth accelerated in the aftermath of the election, when Bluesky added one million users in a single week.

Launched by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Bluesky has attracted some prominent users in recent days, including comedian Ben Stiller, author Stephen King, and pop star Lizzo.

Here’s what to know about Bluesky, and how to join:

What is Bluesky?

Bluesky is a text-oriented social media platform on which users can post messages as long as 300 characters. Like X, the messages posted on Bluesky appear on a newsfeed displayed to users. The app is available on iOS and Android.

The platform operates on an open framework, meaning that users can post their messages to a server tailored for specific interests or communities. The system design resembles that which is used on another text-first app, Mastodon, as well as the decentralized platform Discord.

Bluesky began in 2019 as a venture at Twitter overseen by Dorsey, and was launched as an independent company in 2022, the year after he left Twitter.

Development of the site started after a 2020 tweet from Dorsey announcing Twitter’s plans to fund a decentralized social media platform, Bluesky said in a blog post. The eventual leaders at Bluesky were among those who sent direct messages to Dorsey in response to his post, the blog added.

Who owns Bluesky?

The board of directors at Bluesky features Dorsey as well as Jeremie Miller, the founder in the late 1990s of a free instant messaging service called Jabber.

Bluesky’s CEO is Jay Graber, who formerly founded an events-oriented social media site called Happening and worked as a software engineer on a cryptocurrency called Zcash, according to LinkedIn. She also serves on the Bluesky board.

The company is owned by Graber as well as “the Bluesky team,” the Bluesky website says.

While Bluesky has retained a traditional corporate structure featuring a board and chief executive, the company said it aspires to take control of content away from a top-down entity and return it to creators.

“Traditional social networks are often closed platforms with a central authority,” the website says. “There’s a small group of people who control those companies, and they have total control over how users can use the platform and what developers can build.”

Dorsey criticized Musk’s leadership at Twitter on Bluesky last year, saying that things “all went south” at the platform after Musk’s acquisition, CNBC reported.

Is Bluesky a viable alternative to X?

The steady growth of Bluesky has made it a destination for an increasing number of celebrities, elected officials and government entities. But the platform remains much smaller than X or the Meta-owned competitor, Threads.

Bluesky boasts roughly 20 million users, which amounts to less than 10% of the 229 million daily active users disclosed by Twitter in a June 2022 earnings report. X’s user data is no longer publicly available since Musk took the company private.

In July, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Threads had exceeded 175 million monthly active users.

How do you join Bluesky?

During Bluesky’s initial years, users could only join the platform if they received an invitation. The policy aimed to limit the app’s user base as it underwent testing.

In February, however, the platform made itself available to all users. Individuals or organizations can navigate to the platform and follow instructions to create an account.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — If you are nearing retirement, you will soon be able to stash even more money into your nest egg — if you can afford it.

The Internal Revenue Service announced that the maximum amount individuals can contribute to their 401(k) or similar plans in 2025 will increase to $23,500, up from $23,000 for 2024.

The federal government already lets those 50 and older make extra contributions so that they can save more as they near retirement age. This is known as a “catch-up” contribution.

In 2025, the standard catch-up contribution will stay the same, with a max of $7,500, according to the IRS.

But starting next year, workers ages 60 to 63 will be able to make “super” catch-up contributions, up to $11,250 annually, which is an additional $3,750.

That means they can potentially contribute up to $34,750 in total, each year, to a workplace retirement account.

The substantially higher catch-up contributions are part of SECURE 2.0, which President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022 as part of a $1.7 trillion omnibus spending package.

“While anything that encourages more investing is generally a good thing, I’m afraid this rule change probably won’t make a big impact, ” Bankrate’s Senior Industry Analyst Ted Rossman, told ABC News. “There has to be a very small population between the ages of 60 and 63 who were maxing out their accounts and can now go higher.”

In 2023, just 14% of retirement plan participants maxed out their 401(k) limits, according to Vanguard Research.

Even those who have always maxed out their retirement savings contributions may need to reallocate funds as they age and start to face extra expenses, like sending children to college or caring for aging parents.

Aside from 401(k) plans and similar employee-sponsored plans, the limit on annual Individual Retirement Account contributions is unchanged next year, at $7,000, while the catch-up contribution for people 50 and older will remain $1,000.

Those limits apply to both traditional IRAs, which may offer a tax deduction depending on income, and to Roth IRAs, which don’t come with a tax deduction but do offer tax-free growth and withdrawals in retirement.

An aging population, coupled with fewer companies offering pensions, means that a smaller portion of the population overall is prepared for retirement.

The typical household headed by someone ages 55 to 64 has just $10,000 saved in a retirement account, according to an analysis of federal data by the Economic Policy Institute and the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis.

“Not to discourage investing at any age, but there’s a reason why Einstein said compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world,” Rossman said. “Investing is more powerful when you’re young.”

Still, catch-up contributions can be a valuable way to grow your retirement fund and enjoy the tax benefits.

Rossman said it’s also important to contribute regularly to your 401(k) and gradually increase your contributions. He suggested putting reminders in your calendar to increase your 401(k) contribution every year.

“The idea is that you’re less likely to miss the extra money if you do it gradually or if you do it in tandem with a pay raise,” Rossman said.

For instance, he said, if you’re currently contributing 5% of your salary, could you bump that up to 6% or 7% next year?

“Gradually dialing up your percentage makes it more likely that you’ll stick with the approach,” Rossman added, “and you won’t diminish your standard of living.”

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Bitcoin vaulted to a record high on Thursday, surging more than 3% in early trading and hurtling toward investors’ long-sought milestone of $100,000.

The price of bitcoin briefly exceeded $98,000 for the first time on Thursday morning, before retreating to about $97,600.

The value of the world’s most popular cryptocurrency has soared 31% since the reelection of former President Donald Trump, who is widely viewed as friendly toward digital currency.

By comparison, the S&P 500 has climbed 2.4% since Election Day, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq has increased 2.6%.

The run-up of bitcoin extended to other parts of the crypto industry. Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency, jumped 8% in early trading on Thursday. Lesser-known litecoin rose nearly 6%, and dogecoin ticked up more than 2%.

On the campaign trail, Trump vowed to bolster the cryptocurrency sector and ease regulations enforced by the Biden administration. Trump also promised to establish the federal government’s first National Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.

Trump said he would replace Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler, whom many crypto proponents dislike for what they perceive as a robust approach to crypto regulation.

In July, Trump told the audience at a cryptocurrency conference in Nashville, Tennessee, that he wanted to turn the U.S. into the “crypto capital of the planet.”

“I’m calling it the ‘election dividend,'” James Butterfill, head of research at digital asset management firm CoinShares, told ABC News. “We went from being worried about a Democrat getting elected to what we’ve got: a Republican clean sweep.”

The recent rise follows a period of stellar returns that stretches back to last year. The price of bitcoin has soared more than 150% since November 2023. Over that period, the S&P 500 has climbed about 30%.

Those gains have been propelled, in part, by U.S. approval in January of bitcoin ETFs, or exchange-traded funds. Bitcoin ETFs allow investors to buy into an asset that tracks the price movement of bitcoin, while avoiding the inconvenience and risk of purchasing the crypto coin itself.

Options trading for bitcoin ETFs

On Tuesday, options on BlackRock’s popular iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) were made available for trading on the Nasdaq. The options, which provide a new avenue for bitcoin investors, allow individuals to commit to buy or sell the ETF at a given price by a specific date. While such investments typically come with additional risk, they can also make large payouts.

The price of IBIT jumped 3.1% on Thursday.

The newly available options may account for some of the rise in the price of bitcoin over recent days, Bryan Armour, the director of passive strategies research at financial firm Morningstar, told ABC News.

“The options add volatility on top of volatility, which has interested some of the crypto investors,” Armour said.

The crypto industry entered this year bruised after a series of high-profile collapses and company scandals.

FTX, a multibillion-dollar cryptocurrency exchange co-founded by Sam Bankman-Fried, collapsed in November 2022. The implosion set off a 17-month legal saga that resulted in the conviction of Bankman-Fried for fraud. In April, Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

The surge of bitcoin since Election Day may continue for the foreseeable future, since past periods of momentum have been shown to propel the cryptocurrency, Armour said. But crypto investments remain highly volatile, he added, recommending that the asset make up no more than 5% of a person’s portfolio.

“It’s notoriously difficult to provide a value for bitcoin’s price,” Armour said. “It can go up; it can go down.”

“I would continue to keep any allocation small,” Armour added.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(New York) — Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones accused The Onion and Sandy Hook Elementary School families of “collusive bidding” and asked a bankruptcy court judge to halt the sale of his Infowars platform.

Jones, who defamed the Sandy Hook families by calling the 2012 massacre a hoax and the parents of the 20 first graders actors, called The Onion’s winning $1.75 million bid “sheer nonsense” because it’s half of what the losing bidder offered.

The Onion began a “systematic effort to confuse Mr. Jones’s personal public following with messages espousing gun control in a manner such that Mr Jones’s personal public following would be utterly confused and misled,” Jones said in an overnight court filing.

His request follows a similar push for an injunction by First United American Companies, which is affiliated with Jones through the sale of dietary supplements.

The plaintiffs nor the trustee immediately responded to Jones but the trustee has previously called the auction result legitimate and asked the court for approval.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — President-elect Donald Trump sharply criticized the rising price of groceries throughout his campaign, even delivering an address outside his New Jersey home in August alongside a table covered with cereal boxes, coffee grounds and ketchup.

A wave of consumer discontent appears to have helped lift him back into the Oval Office, but Trump now faces the task of how to ease voters’ frustration.

Food inflation soared to a peak of more than 10% in 2022, but price increases have slowed to about 2%, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows.

Still, the yearslong bout of rapid inflation has sent food prices soaring more than 25% since President Joe Biden took office.

Typically, prices do not fall across the board unless the economy slows or even tips into recession, which would reduce consumer demand but also impose economic hardship, some economists told ABC News.

Still, Trump could enact policies that may slow the rise of grocery prices, or even lower the cost of some household staples, economists added.

“Prices on different items absolutely could come down,” Michael Faulkender, a professor of finance at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, told ABC News.

In response to ABC News’ request for comment, the Trump transition team said in a statement that Trump intends to fulfill the commitments he made during the campaign. But the transition team did not specifically address the issue of grocery prices.

“The American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail. He will deliver.” Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the transition team, told ABC News.

Increase oil production

On the campaign trail, Trump often responded to concern about prices with a three-word mantra: “Drill, baby, drill.”

Trump, who has downplayed human-caused climate change, vowed to bolster the oil and gas industry by easing regulation and expanding output.

In theory, increased oil production could lower food prices since gas makes up a key source of costs throughout the supply chain, whether a firm is growing crops or transporting them to a seller, economists said.

“Energy is a big input cost for food,” David Andolfatto, an economist at the University of Miami, told ABC News. “That should put downward pressure on food prices.”

While such a move could prove beneficial, increased oil output under President Joe Biden coincided with the surge of inflation in recent years. Since oil is sold on a global market, a surge in domestic production may not lower prices for U.S. consumers as much as some may expect.

The U.S. set a record for crude oil production in 2023, averaging 12.9 million barrels per day, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, a federal agency.

A further uptick in oil production risks accelerating the nation’s carbon emissions and worsening the impact of climate change, which would carry costs down the road, Luis Cabral, a professor of economics at New York University, told ABC News.

“We can’t simply look at the benefits,” Cabral said, acknowledging the potential for lower food prices. “There are also important costs in terms of emissions and climate change.”

Bolster antitrust enforcement

To address high food prices, the Trump administration could crack down on market concentration, a term economists use to describe the dominance of a given industry by a handful of firms, some experts said.

They pointed to the market power of large corporations as a cause of rapid price increases, saying companies use their outsized role in the market to raise prices without fear of a competitor offering a comparable product at a more affordable price.

“Whenever there are fewer players in an industry, prices tend to be higher,” Cabral said. “Supermarkets aren’t an exception.”

Grocery store profit margins surged in 2021 and rose even higher two years later, even after price increases had begun to cool, a Federal Trade Commission study in March showed.

In February, the Federal Trade Commission sued to block the merger of supermarket chains Kroger and Albertsons, which would amount to the largest supermarket merger in U.S. history. The proceedings are ongoing, and will likely stretch into the Trump administration.

Some economists cast doubt over the potential benefits of antitrust, saying the recent bout of inflation coincided with an uptick in production costs during the pandemic. “It’s hard to argue that it’s therefore some kind of profiteering,” Faulkender said.

Price-gouging ban

During the campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris proposed a federal ban on price gouging for food and groceries.

The plan could resemble price-gouging bans in place in 37 states, which prohibit a sudden spike in prices for scarce goods, the Harris campaign said. Those bans prohibit companies from exploiting a sudden imbalance between supply and demand by significantly hiking prices.

While Trump may be reluctant to adopt a policy put forward by his proponent, he could advance a price-gouging ban as a means of preventing acute price increases for specific goods.

For instance, egg prices have skyrocketed 30% over the year ending in October, U.S. Bureau of Statistics data on Wednesday showed. The spike owed primarily to an avian flu outbreak that has decimated supply. Last year, egg prices climbed more than 60% in response to a similar avian flu outbreak.

Economists who spoke to ABC News differed on the effectiveness of a potential price-gouging ban.

Some economists dismissed the policy as a flawed solution, since state-level bans usually get triggered only in the case of emergencies and, even then, often lack clarity about the type of company behavior that constitutes price-gouging.

“I don’t think a federal price-gouging ban would help at all,” Cabral said.

Andolfatto, of the University of Miami, said a price-gouging ban could lower food prices if it barred rapid price increases under some circumstances. However, those benefits may be outweighed by the downside, since such a ban could override the market signal delivered by prices, which help direct the distribution of goods to places where they are in short supply.

“These types of interventions have unintended consequences,” Andolfatto said.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — President-elect Donald Trump sharply criticized the rising price of groceries throughout his campaign, even delivering an address outside his New Jersey home in August alongside a table covered with cereal boxes, coffee grounds and ketchup.

A wave of consumer discontent appears to have helped lift him back into the Oval Office, but Trump now faces the task of how to ease voters’ frustration.

Food inflation soared to a peak of more than 10% in 2022, but price increases have slowed to about 2%, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows.

Still, the yearslong bout of rapid inflation has sent food prices soaring more than 25% since President Joe Biden took office.

Typically, prices do not fall across the board unless the economy slows or even tips into recession, which would reduce consumer demand but also impose economic hardship, some economists told ABC News.

Still, Trump could enact policies that may slow the rise of grocery prices, or even lower the cost of some household staples, economists added.

“Prices on different items absolutely could come down,” Michael Faulkender, a professor of finance at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, told ABC News.

In response to ABC News’ request for comment, the Trump transition team said in a statement that Trump intends to fulfill the commitments he made during the campaign. But the transition team did not specifically address the issue of grocery prices.

“The American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail. He will deliver.” Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the transition team, told ABC News.

Increase oil production

On the campaign trail, Trump often responded to concern about prices with a three-word mantra: “Drill, baby, drill.”

Trump, who has downplayed human-caused climate change, vowed to bolster the oil and gas industry by easing regulation and expanding output.

In theory, increased oil production could lower food prices since gas makes up a key source of costs throughout the supply chain, whether a firm is growing crops or transporting them to a seller, economists said.

“Energy is a big input cost for food,” David Andolfatto, an economist at the University of Miami, told ABC News. “That should put downward pressure on food prices.”

While such a move could prove beneficial, increased oil output under President Joe Biden coincided with the surge of inflation in recent years. Since oil is sold on a global market, a surge in domestic production may not lower prices for U.S. consumers as much as some may expect.

The U.S. set a record for crude oil production in 2023, averaging 12.9 million barrels per day, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, a federal agency.

A further uptick in oil production risks accelerating the nation’s carbon emissions and worsening the impact of climate change, which would carry costs down the road, Luis Cabral, a professor of economics at New York University, told ABC News.

“We can’t simply look at the benefits,” Cabral said, acknowledging the potential for lower food prices. “There are also important costs in terms of emissions and climate change.”

Bolster antitrust enforcement

To address high food prices, the Trump administration could crack down on market concentration, a term economists use to describe the dominance of a given industry by a handful of firms, some experts said.

They pointed to the market power of large corporations as a cause of rapid price increases, saying companies use their outsized role in the market to raise prices without fear of a competitor offering a comparable product at a more affordable price.

“Whenever there are fewer players in an industry, prices tend to be higher,” Cabral said. “Supermarkets aren’t an exception.”

Grocery store profit margins surged in 2021 and rose even higher two years later, even after price increases had begun to cool, a Federal Trade Commission study in March showed.

In February, the Federal Trade Commission sued to block the merger of supermarket chains Kroger and Albertsons, which would amount to the largest supermarket merger in U.S. history. The proceedings are ongoing, and will likely stretch into the Trump administration.

Some economists cast doubt over the potential benefits of antitrust, saying the recent bout of inflation coincided with an uptick in production costs during the pandemic. “It’s hard to argue that it’s therefore some kind of profiteering,” Faulkender said.

Price-gouging ban

During the campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris proposed a federal ban on price gouging for food and groceries.

The plan could resemble price-gouging bans in place in 37 states, which prohibit a sudden spike in prices for scarce goods, the Harris campaign said. Those bans prohibit companies from exploiting a sudden imbalance between supply and demand by significantly hiking prices.

While Trump may be reluctant to adopt a policy put forward by his proponent, he could advance a price-gouging ban as a means of preventing acute price increases for specific goods.

For instance, egg prices have skyrocketed 30% over the year ending in October, U.S. Bureau of Statistics data on Wednesday showed. The spike owed primarily to an avian flu outbreak that has decimated supply. Last year, egg prices climbed more than 60% in response to a similar avian flu outbreak.

Economists who spoke to ABC News differed on the effectiveness of a potential price-gouging ban.

Some economists dismissed the policy as a flawed solution, since state-level bans usually get triggered only in the case of emergencies and, even then, often lack clarity about the type of company behavior that constitutes price-gouging.

“I don’t think a federal price-gouging ban would help at all,” Cabral said.

Andolfatto, of the University of Miami, said a price-gouging ban could lower food prices if it barred rapid price increases under some circumstances. However, those benefits may be outweighed by the downside, since such a ban could override the market signal delivered by prices, which help direct the distribution of goods to places where they are in short supply.

“These types of interventions have unintended consequences,” Andolfatto said.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Americans’ credit card debt has hit a record high, the Federal Reserve of New York said in a report released this week.

Credit card debt climbed $24 billion over a three-month stretch ending in September, soaring to a level 8% higher than where it stood a year ago, the report said.

Debt holders may seek solace in a string of recent interest rate cuts at the Federal Reserve, which typically reduce borrowing rates for credit cards. But credit card interest rates have proven stubborn, leaving borrowers saddled with near record-high average payments even after the rate cuts.

The average credit card interest rate stands at 20.35%, just slightly below a record-high of 20.79% attained in August before the Fed began cutting rates, Bankrate data showed.

Credit card interest rates remain high, in part, because the Fed’s benchmark rate still stands at a historically high level, experts told ABC News. The incremental cuts in recent months have only partially reversed the previous escalation of rates meant to fight the nation’s worst bout of inflation in decades.

That high baseline rate has collided with a rise in the average credit card margin, or the borrowing cost that companies place on top of the benchmark rate to weather default risk, cover overhead costs and recoup profits, experts added.

“Credit card rates are high, and they’re staying high,” Ted Rossman, a senior industry analyst at Bankrate, told ABC News.

To set credit card interest rates, the industry relies on what’s called a “prime rate,” which is the rate paid by the most creditworthy borrowers. That rate is calculated by adding three percentage points to the Fed’s benchmark interest rate. The prime rate, which acts as a baseline for credit card rates faced by all borrowers, currently stands at 7.75%.

The prime rate remains historically high because the Fed has, so far, taken just a few, incremental steps toward dialing back a yearslong series of rate hikes. In recent months, the Fed has cut interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point, but such relief offers little savings for credit card borrowers, experts said.

Policymakers at the Fed forecast another quarter-point cut next month, and cuts next year totaling one percentage point, but that will still leave interest rates at an elevated level, according to projections released in September.

“I don’t think the Fed wants a rapid fall in rates,” John Sedunov, a finance professor at Villanova University’s School of Business, told ABC News. “It wants to gradually ease rates back.”

The persistence of high interest rates has coincided with a rise in the margin charged by credit companies over and above the prime rate, some experts said.

The average margin charged by credit card firms reached an all-time high of 14.3% last year, according to a U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau analysis of Federal Reserve data. The margin increased sharply from a rate of 9.3% in 2013, the CFPB found.

The rise in credit card delinquency owes, in part, to a decline in personal savings, as Americans have spent down pandemic-era economic stimulus and turned to credit card loans, Sedunov said.

“Banks may view the amount of risk in credit card lending as higher than it was a few years ago, even though the Fed is lowering rates,” Sedunov said.

Growth in credit card margins also stems from old-fashioned profit-taking on the part of credit card companies, some experts said.

Credit card profitability has increased over the past five years, and has outpaced the profitability of other business drivers at the companies that offer them, according to the CFPB report.

“Banks, especially large banks, are trying to make as much profit as they can,” Fariz Huseynov, a professor of corporate finance at North Dakota State University, told ABC News.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — Social media platform TikTok is hurtling toward a U.S. ban that could upend its business and frustrate more than 150 million American users — unless President-elect Donald Trump finds a way to reverse the policy.

Trump, who boasts 14 million followers on TikTok, voiced opposition to the ban earlier this year. The policy, which orders TikTok to find a U.S. parent company or face a ban, is set to take effect on Jan. 19, a day before Trump’s inauguration.

An effort to eliminate the ban may present formidable political challenges and legal hurdles, experts told ABC News. The outcome could depend on support from an array of major institutions ranging from Congress and the Supreme Court to tech giants like Google and Oracle, they added.

The China-owned app has faced growing scrutiny from government officials over fears that user data could fall into the possession of the Chinese government and the app could be weaponized by China to spread misinformation.

There is little evidence that TikTok has shared U.S. user data with the Chinese government or that the Chinese government has asked the app to do so, cybersecurity experts previously told ABC News.

TikTok did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment. Neither did Trump’s transition team.

The president is expected to try to stop the ban of TikTok after he takes office, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with his views on the matter.

Here’s what to know about the different ways that Trump could try to stop the TikTok ban, according to experts:

Push Congress to repeal the TikTok ban

The most straightforward way to reverse the policy would be a repeal of the law that enacted the ban in the first place, experts told ABC News.

A repeal would require passage in both houses of Congress, landing the measure on Trump’s desk for his signature.

“The easiest way is to ask Congress to reverse the ban,” Anupam Chander, a professor of law and technology at Georgetown University, told ABC News. But, he added, it isn’t as easy as it sounds.

Congress voted in favor of the ban only seven months ago. In the House of Representatives, the ban passed by an overwhelming margin of 352-65. In the Senate, 79 members voted in favor of the measure, while 18 opposed and 3 abstained.

A repeal effort carries political risks for Trump, since it could be perceived as conciliatory toward China, in contrast with the adversarial tone voiced by Trump on the campaign trail, James Lewis, a data security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told ABC News.

“It’s a political problem,” Lewis said, noting that Trump could soften potential backlash by seeking a reform of the law rather than an outright repeal.

Trump may not need Congress to repeal the ban. A lawsuit against the ban brought by TikTok on First Amendment grounds currently stands before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Experts who spoke to ABC News said they expect the court to rule against TikTok, but the company could then appeal, potentially sending the case to the Supreme Court before the ban takes effect. The Supreme Court may determine that the legal challenge holds sufficient merit to delay implementation of the ban, leading ultimately to a rejection of the law.

“The Supreme Court may want a crack at this,” Alan Rozenshtein, a law professor at the University of Minnesota who focuses on the First Amendment, told ABC News.

Refuse to enforce the TikTok ban

Instead of repealing the law or counting on court intervention, Trump could try to prevent the Justice Department from enforcing the measure, experts said.

The law orders distributors like Apple and Google to stop offering the social media platform in their app stores, and it requires cloud service providers like Oracle to withhold the infrastructure necessary for TikTok to operate.

Companies that violate the law risk a penalty of $5,000 for each user who accesses TikTok. “That adds up,” Rozenshtein said.

In theory, Trump’s Justice Department could opt against enforcement of the law, reassuring the likes of Apple and Oracle that the companies would not face prosecution in the event of a violation, experts said.

Along similar lines, the Trump administration could take up an interpretation of the ban that affords it wide latitude in finding that TikTok has complied with a requirement that it divest from parent company ByteDance, experts said.

In other words, even if TikTok has made little effort to comply with the law, the Trump administration could attempt a reading of the measure that finds the company has met the threshold necessary to avoid a ban, Rozenshtein said.

If Trump opts against enforcement, the move could still prove insufficient. Companies like Apple and Oracle may decide to comply with the ban anyway, since they could face legal risk if the Trump administration reverses its approach, Rozenshtein added.

“Trump is mercurial,” Rozenshtein said. “If you are Apple’s general counsel, do you really want this hanging over you?”

Help TikTok find a U.S. buyer

Finally, Trump could try to find a U.S. buyer for TikTok, allowing the platform to avoid a ban. This approach may appeal to Trump’s self-image as a business dealmaker, but time is running short for such a significant business transaction and TikTok has shown little appetite for it, experts said.

The law allows for a 90-day extension of the deadline for a TikTok sale, as long as the company is advancing toward an agreement. Under such a scenario, the deadline would move back to April, providing Trump with additional time.

“It’s possible that he’ll try to force TikTok to come to some kind of deal with American buyers,” Lewis said. “It’s not likely. TikTok will hold out as long as they can.”

China has signaled opposition to the sale of TikTok to a U.S. company, The Wall Street Journal reported in March.

Alternatively, Trump could seek a compromise measure in Congress that affords him additional time and wider latitude to establish a U.S.-based operation for TikTok, experts said. Or the Trump administration could offer up an interpretation of the law that gives it space to strike a compromise with TikTok.

TikTok previously proposed a solution called “Project Texas,” in which the company would keep all data on U.S. users within the country through a partnership with Oracle. When TikTok CEO Shou Chew testified before Congress last year, several members raised concern about a potential lack of third-party oversight in such an arrangement.

Trump could seek to assuage the concerns of members of Congress while reaching terms satisfactory to TikTok, Chander said.

“Trump may be able to do things that reassure the American people that the app is safe, and that it is bringing a lot of the programming here to U.S. soil,” Chander said.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. government is set to release new inflation data on Wednesday, offering a fresh look at price increases little more than a week after the issue appeared to help former President Donald Trump win re-election.

Inflation has cooled dramatically since a peak of 9% attained in 2022, now hovering near the Federal Reserve’s target rate of 2%.

The slowdown of price increases has coincided with robust economic growth, establishing the twin conditions necessary for the U.S. to achieve a “soft landing.”

Economists expect prices to have risen 2.6% over the year ending in October. That figure would mark a slight uptick from the annual rate of 2.4% recorded during the previous month.

Still, policymakers at the Fed forecast that inflation will inch downward toward normal levels next year, and reach the central bank’s target rate in 2026, according to projections released in September.

The Fed cut interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point last week. The move came two months after the Fed cut its benchmark interest rate a half of a percentage point, dialing back its fight against inflation since it began in 2021.

The Fed is guided by a dual mandate to keep inflation under control and maximize employment. In theory, lower interest rates help stimulate economic activity and boost employment.

While the central bank’s concern about inflation has receded in recent months, a renewed focus on the labor market has risen to the fore. Employment has continued to grow but expansion has slowed in recent months. The unemployment rate has ticked up from 3.7% to 4.1% this year.

“We continue to be confident that with an appropriate recalibration of our policy stance, strength in the economy and labor market can be maintained with inflation moving sustainably down to 2%,” Fed Chair Jerome Powell said at a press conference in Washington, D.C., last week.

Even as inflation has slowed, that progress hasn’t reversed a leap in prices that dates back to the pandemic. Since President Joe Biden took office in 2021, consumer prices have skyrocketed more than 20%.

The price hikes appeared to fuel support for Trump in last week’s election. More than two-thirds of voters say the economy is in bad shape, according to the preliminary results of an ABC News exit poll.

However, Trump’s proposals of heightened tariffs and the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants could rekindle rapid price increases, some experts previously told ABC News.

When asked last week about the Fed’s potential response to Trump’s policies, Powell said the central bank would make its decisions based on how any policy changes could impact the economy.

“In the near term, the election will have no effects on our policy decisions,” Powell said on Thursday. “We don’t know what the timing and substance of any policy changes will be. We therefore don’t know what the effects on the economy will be.”

“We don’t guess, we don’t speculate and we don’t assume,” Powell added.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Shares in Donald Trump’s social media company spiked after the president-elect again vowed not to sell his stake in the parent company of Truth Social and called for an investigation into “market manipulators or short sellers.”

Trump Media’s stock price increased by nearly 16 percent to $32 per share on Friday, as investors reacted to the news.

In interviews with ABC News before the election, some shareholders expressed optimism about the company’s future if Trump won the election, in large part due to his potential ability to investigate and stop so-called “naked short sellers,” who they blamed for the company’s lackluster stock price.

Earlier this year, Trump Media’s CEO Devin Nunes called for Nasdaq to investigate whether the company’s stock price was manipulated by short sellers betting against the company without owning or borrowing shares.

“I’m very happy he’s the president and think he’ll do something about the short selling when he gets into office,” Todd Schlanger, a shareholder from West Palm Beach, told ABC News.

“The system seems kind of rigged,” Todd Schlanger, a shareholder from West Palm Beach, told ABC News earlier this year. “Once he becomes president, I think he’s going to fire the head of the SEC, and I think that’s going to make a big change for the company and for all companies.”

Shares in the company — which some analysts saw as a bellwether for Trump’s electoral odds — have surged since late September when the stock traded as low as $12. As Trump’s odds of winning the election improved, the stock’s value tripled in October, trading at more than $50 per share.

But the company’s long-term success remains uncertain, with the company losing more than $19 million during the last quarter while bringing in only $1 million in revenue, according to a recent SEC filing.

According to Similarweb, a data tracking site, the site only attracts 3.7 million unique monthly visitors, compared to rival X’s 461.4M monthly visitors.

As Trump heads into office and the company’s share price continues to surge, his 57 percent stake in the company is worth nearly $4 billion.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.