President Donald Trump has directed his Justice Department to pause enforcement of the TikTok ban until early April, but a host of questions remain - including whether Trump has the authority to issue such an order and if TikTok’s China-based parent would be amenable to selling the popular social media platform.

Legal experts said despite Trump's order, service providers and app distributors such as Google and Apple still face major uncertainty and potential massive financial liability for defying a law that banned TikTok in the United States unless Chinese parent ByteDance divested the company by Jan.