Legislation that provides China’s ByteDance roughly six months to remove the well-known TikTok short video app was announced by President Joe Biden on Friday. This came as his opponent, Donald Trump, expressed alarm over the service, which is used by 170 million Americans, being banned.
The TikTok crackdown bill will be put to a vote in the US House of Representatives the next week after being overwhelmingly passed by a committee on Thursday.
“I will sign it if they pass it,” Democratic Senator Joe Biden stated to reporters.
On social media, Republican candidate for president in November, Donald Trump, who is against banning TikTok, stated, “If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook… will double their business,” and that he does not want Facebook to be “doing better.”
After deleting two of his tweets from the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol disturbance, Trump had earlier denounced Facebook parent company Meta Platforms (META.O), opening a new page for banning his access to Facebook and Instagram. February 2023 saw the reinstatement of his accounts.
Regarding if he has a stance on the bill, the Trump team did not immediately respond. Meta Platforms did not want to respond.
According to a letter seen by Reuters, the Justice Department informed the House Committee on Energy and Commerce that a divestiture measure would give the government a stronger legal position than a bill outlawing TikTok.
Vice President Mike Pence, who supported the House bill on TikTok, was a Trump ally. “Children in America are being mentally abused by China. “It’s enough,” he posted on the social media platform X, which was once known as Twitter.
Per the measure, ByteDance would have 165 days to unload TikTok. If it is unable to accomplish this, Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O) and Apple’s (AAPL.O) app stores open a new tab. It was illegal for Google and other companies to offer TikTok or give Web hosting services to applications under ByteDance management.
Trump attempted to outlaw TikTok and WeChat, a Chinese-owned company, in 2020, but the courts stopped him.
In response to Trump’s claim that the former president assisted in addressing concerns over TikTok users in the United States through a $1.5 billion company project, Republican Senator Rand Paul, who had previously resisted attempts to expedite a ban on the app, opened a new tab.
“So why is the House GOP siding with Biden and still trying to ban Tik Tok?” Paul used the acronym for Republicans in his writing on X. “Congress will behave similarly to Chinese communists who have also outlawed TikTok if they do so. Just uphold the First Amendment, please.
In an executive order signed in August 2020, Trump claimed that the data collection on TikTok “threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information — potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.”
TikTok claims the House measure is effectively a prohibition, stating that it has not shared and will not share user data from Americans with the Chinese government. It’s uncertain if TikTok could be divested in six months or if China would allow any sales.
“TikTok will be completely banned in the United States as a result of this legislation,” the company declared following the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s vote. “The government is attempting to strip 170 million Americans of their Constitutional right to free expression.”
Getting legislation adopted by the House and Senate in an election year may be challenging due to the popularity of the app. The Biden reelection campaign joined TikTok last month.
The Trump campaign isn’t on TikTok.
David Shepardson reported from Washington. Editing by Matthew Lewis and Nick Zieminski
