TikTok denied emergency request to stop ban from taking effect
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(NEW YORK) — The federal appeals court that last week rejected TikTok’s attempt to overthrow its pending ban denied the company’s request Friday that sought to pause the ruling and the Jan. 19 deadline for a sale.
The company, which has been forced by a federal law to sell to a new owner or be banned in the U.S., requested the emergency pause earlier in the week arguing it would afford the Supreme Court time to determine whether it should review the law.
However, the D.C. Circuit judges said that Congress made a “deliberate choice” to set a 270-day time frame for the sale-or-ban, “subject to one (and only one) extension.”
“The petitioners have not identified any case in which a court, after rejecting a constitutional challenge to an Act of Congress, has enjoined the Act from going into effect while review is sought in the Supreme Court,” the judges wrote in the unsigned order.
TikTok has not immediately commented about the order.
The Justice Department asked the court to reject TikTok’s request for a temporary injunction.
“The Court is familiar with the relevant facts and law and has definitively rejected petitioners’ constitutional claims in a thorough decision that recognizes the critical national-security interests underlying the Act,” the DOJ’s attorneys said.
The Justice Department did not immediately comment on the decision either.
The case would have to go to the Supreme Court if TikTok chooses to appeal, which could delay the Jan. 19 deadline.
President Joe Biden signed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which was part of a massive, $95 billion foreign aid package passed by Congress, on April 24.
As part of the act, TikTok, which has over 170 million U.S. users, is forced to sell the company from its current Chinese-based owner ByteDance.
The president and some congressional leaders have argued that the ultimatum against TikTok was necessary because of security concerns about ByteDance and its connections to the Chinese government.
ByteDance rebutted those allegations in its lawsuit, arguing there has been no tangible evidence that the app poses any security risk and filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department in May.
The law has prompted major protests from TikTok’s American users who have defended the app.
President-elect Donald Trump once proposed a TikTok ban when he was in office but has changed his stance and signaled he would reverse the ban once in office. A reversal, however, would require approval from both houses of Congress.
(NEW YORK) — If you’ve opened Instagram over the last few days, you’ve likely seen a post that begins with the words “Goodbye Meta AI.”
The post, most often shared on Instagram stories, features black-and-white text warning of “legal consequences” and the use of artificial intelligence by Meta, the parent company of Instagram, Threads and Facebook.
“If you do not post at least once it will be assumed you are okay with them using your information and photos,” the text reads, in part. “I do not give Meta or anyone else permission to use any of my personal data, profile information or photos.”
Since early September, the message has been shared widely, even though it is a hoax.
More recently, when the message is shared on Instagram stories, it is blocked out by a warning that the message contains “false information.”
The warning directs users to a fact-check on the website LeadStories.com.
“Does posting a statement ensure that users of Meta services will not have their data used in Meta’s artificial intelligence training? No, that’s not true: Posting the viral statement, or any other statement, doesn’t mean that Meta will not use that data for AI training, but users in Europe can object via a form in their account settings,” the fact-check reads. “The statement is an example of “copypasta,” text containing information that’s often not true but which is repeatedly copied and pasted online.”
Meta describes generative AI as, “a type of artificial intelligence that can create new content when a person or business gives it instructions or asks it a question.”
When Meta announced its new generative AI features last year, the company detailed how and why it uses data for AI purposes.
According to the company, it pulls data for AI from users’ public posts, their interactions with AI features and publicly-available information from places like databases and search engines.
“We use public posts and comments on Facebook and Instagram to train generative AI models for these features and for the open-source community,” reads Meta’s public privacy policy. “We don’t use posts or comments with an audience other than Public for these purposes.”
The company does not appear to pull information from data for generative AI from user accounts that are set to private.
Meta did not reply to ABC News’ request for comment.
(NEW YORK) — 7-Eleven will close more than 400 of its “underperforming stores” across the U.S. and Canada in an effort to reduce costs and bolster earnings before the end of the year.
Seven & I Holdings, the Tokyo-based parent company of the convenience store chain, announced the news during an earnings call last week, saying 444 stores will be shuttered due to the cumulative factors of inflation, slower customer traffic, and declining cigarette sales.
“All of these have impacted our sales and merchandise gross profit,” the CEO and President Joe DePinto said on the call.
As a result of the “macroeconomic conditions and evolving industry trends,” DePinto added that the company has revised its earning guidance.
The company reported a 7.3% decline in store traffic back in August and and said during its latest earnings reporting that the pattern corresponds with the “pullback of the middle- and low-income consumer.”
The total number of closures accounts for just over 3% of the more than 13,000 7-Eleven stores in North America.
(NEW YORK) — President-elect Donald Trump this week vowed to block the purchase of U.S. Steel by Japanese steelmaker Nippon Steel Corp., promising to bolster the domestic steel industry with tariffs.
“I am totally against the once great and powerful U.S. Steel being bought by a foreign company, Trump said in a post on Truth Social, pledging to make U.S. Steel “Strong and Great Again, and it will happen FAST!”
Trump has proposed a tax as high as 20% on every product imported from all U.S. trading partners, as well as a tax of between 60% and 100% on all goods from China, the world’s leading steel producer.
Those policies could modestly improve the outlook for domestic steelmakers by hiking prices, boosting revenue and increasing employment, though the benefits would not lift the sector to the heights attained in its heyday, experts told ABC News.
The experts warned, however, that a potential rekindling of consumer price increases as a result of the wide-ranging tariffs could damage the steel industry as part of a wider economic slowdown.
The policies also risk harming the nation’s manufacturing sector as a whole, since the tariffs would hike costs for factories that rely on raw steel as an input, making those firms less competitive with their international counterparts, the experts said.
“We have tried to help the steel industry many, many times before,” Kyle Handley, a professor of economics at the University of California, San Diego, told ABC News, pointing to steel tariffs established during Trump’s first term and retained under President Joe Biden.
“Yet, here we are and the industry still needs more help,” Handley added.
In response to ABC News’ request for comment, the Trump transition team touted the tariffs imposed during his first term in office.
“In his first term, President Trump instituted tariffs against China that created jobs, spurred investment, and resulted in no inflation. President Trump will work quickly to fix and restore an economy that puts American workers [first] by re-shoring American jobs, lowering inflation, raising real wages, lowering taxes, cutting regulations, and unshackling American energy,” Trump transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
Tariffs remain popular with steel industry leaders. The Steel Manufacturers Association, or SMA, the largest U.S. trade association representing steelmakers, has urged the incoming Trump administration to strengthen steel tariffs.
“We are under constant threat from nonmarket economies who evade our trade laws to dump cheap, heavily subsidized, high-emissions steel and other products into the American market, making it hard for domestic manufacturers to compete,” SMA President Philip Bell said in a statement on Tuesday.
“Fortunately, President-elect Trump has vowed to use every tool he can to end unfair trade while stimulating growth in jobs and productivity,” Bell added.
In 2018, Trump slapped tariffs on aluminum and steel from a host of countries, including Mexico, Canada and the European Union.
Over the ensuing years, U.S. steel prices soared and output climbed.
The average price of a ton of hot-rolled steel — a common metric used for steel prices — soared from about $700 to $1,850 between 2017 and 2021, according to a study last year by the United States International Trade Commission, a government agency.
However, prices also spiked in non-U.S. steel markets over that period amid a global rise in demand, leaving only a modest impact from the tariffs, the study found. Steel production showed a similarly incremental advance, ticking upward by nearly 2% per year on average due to the tariffs, the study showed.
“It was a good thing for the steel industries because they were getting higher prices for steel and producing more,” Handley said.
The tariffs did not cause a sustained increase in employment for the steel industry, however, according to some data. Nationwide employment at steel and iron mills stood at 80,600 in 2017 — and registered the exact same number of workers last year, government data showed.
Technological advances in steel production have made the work less labor intensive, reducing the need for employees, Katheryn Russ, an economics professor at the University of California, Davis, told ABC News.
The proposed across-the-board tariffs could amplify the benefits for the steel industry that resulted from tariffs initiated during Trump’s first term, Russ said. But, she added, “It is unclear how it would affect employment in steel plants.”
Trump’s proposals would also intensify the negative effects that resulted from the first round of tariffs, including cost increases for a range of manufacturers that use raw steel as inputs, experts said. Those higher costs would hurt the competitiveness of such U.S. producers, risking lost revenue and potential layoffs, they added.
“Everybody who buys steel would now have higher costs,” Handley said. “We can have a debate about who should win or lose from that, but you can’t have everybody win.”
Economists widely forecast that tariffs of the magnitude proposed by Trump would also increase prices paid by U.S. shoppers, since importers typically pass along a share of the cost of those higher taxes to consumers.
A potential price spike risks slashing consumer purchases and slowing the economy, which would hurt a wide swath of businesses, including steel producers, Gordon Johnson, whose firm, GLJ Research, analyzes the steel industry, told ABC News.
“People will buy less of everything,” Johnson said. “That would be very bad for all U.S. businesses — steel companies as well.”
Still, Johnson said he understands the enduring cultural resonance of the steel industry, citing the phenomenon as a reason for why the sector receives attention from policymakers.
“When you say ‘steelworkers,’ you think of some guy who gets up at 6 a.m., gets McDonald’s coffee, puts on overalls and a big flannel and goes to work in the mill,” Johnson said. “He’s a hard worker and a quintessential U.S. citizen.”
He added, “Steel was a historic and traditional American staple. That’s why people care so much.”
