WASHINGTON: The Justice Department on Wednesday asked a US appeals court to put on hold the government's appeal of a lower court ruling that blocked the Trump administration from imposing restrictions on Chinese-owned app TikTok.

Under former President Donald Trump, the US Commerce Department sought to ban Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc's Google app stores from offering TikTok for download to new users and to ban other technical transactions that TikTok said would have had the effect of barring the app's use in the United States.

The Justice Department told the appeals court for the District of Columbia that the Commerce Department "plans to conduct an evaluation of the underlying record justifying those prohibitions" to determine if the national security threat described by Trump warrants the restrictions.