WASHINGTON — Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said he supports TikTok even as a potential ban looms if Chinese-parent company ByteDance fails to divest the short video app's US assets.

"I'm for TikTok because you need competition. If you don't have TikTok, you have Facebook and Instagram," Trump told Bloomberg BusinessWeek in an interview posted Tuesday. Trump previously called TikTok, which is used by 170 million Americans, a threat but then joined TikTok last month.

Trump, who has criticised Meta Platforms-owned Facebook and Instagram for suspending him for two years in the wake of the deadly Capitol Hill riot on Jan 6, 2021, told an interviewer in June he would never support a TikTok ban.

TikTok declined to comment. As president, Trump tried to ban TikTok and Chinese-owned WeChat in 2020 but the move was blocked by the courts. In June 2021, President Joe Biden withdrew a series of Trump-era executive orders that sought to ban WeChat and TikTok.

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