TikTok’s Influence on Consumers Runs Deep

If TikTok falls, where will trends sprout from? That’s the question Bloomberg Businessweek senior reporter Amanda Mull explores in her latest Buying Power column, an excerpt of which is below. Plus, the next trendsetters for luxury brands should be over 50, experts say. If this email was forwarded to you, click here to sign up.

If you were to use TikTok’s own vernacular to describe its current state, you might say the vibes are unsettled. A law banning the app in the US is set to go into effect on Jan. 19, though it’s anyone’s guess whether it actually will. Legal experts have generally described TikTok’s path to salvation as narrow—lower courts have sided with the Biden administration, and President-elect Donald Trump cannot himself squash the ban he first proposed in 2020 once he takes office. But the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the app’s appeal, and Trump has asked the court to delay the ban’s implementation until after he takes office in hopes of brokering a deal with its parent company, ByteDance Ltd. ByteDance, too, could head off the ban by selling its US business, but the Chinese company has said it has no intention of doing so.