The US Congress took a decisive step late Tuesday to force ByteDance, the Chinese owner of popular social media app TikTok, to divest its US operations within a year or potentially face a nationwide ban.
The sell-or-be-banned measure cleared the US Senate by a margin of 79-18, garnering strong bipartisan support by including the legislation in a broader foreign-aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan worth US$95.3 billion.
“Congress has passed my legislation to strengthen our national security and send a message to the world about the power of American leadership: we stand resolutely for democracy and freedom, and against tyranny and oppression,” US President Joe Biden said after final passage.
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Biden has vowed to sign the bill into law Wednesday – even though his campaign joined TikTok to court young voters ahead of a presumed rematch for the White House this fall with his predecessor, Donald Trump.
The House on Saturday passed the legislation 360 to 58, attaching it to the sweeping foreign-aid bill.
Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the No 2 Republican in the chamber, said he was pleased that the legislation would ban TikTok if “the company is not bought by an entity unaffiliated with the Chinese Communist Party”.
Reports that the Chinese embassy lobbied congressional staff against the bill, he added, were a “stunning confirmation of the value the Chinese government places on its ability to access Americans information and shape their TikTok experience”.
Senator Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington state, who pushed to extend the divestment to one year from six months, claimed China had created “back doors” into apps on phones and laptops to target “vulnerable Americans”.
Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said the measure “puts the US on the wrong side of the principles of fair competition and international trade rules”.
“How the US has handled TikTok enables the world to see clearly whether the US’s ‘rules’ and ‘order’ serve the whole world or only the US,” he added.
The action follows months of congressional fast-tracking and lobbying and deals a serious blow to the short-video platform that in recent years has proved a cultural sensation with more than 175 million American users.
Trump on Monday criticised Biden for the TikTok ban and urged young voters to consider the Democratic president’s position come November.
Biden would be “responsible for banning TikTok”, Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “He is the one pushing it to close and doing it to help his friends over at Facebook become richer and more dominant.”
In 2020, then-president Trump sought to ban TikTok, but was blocked by the courts.
When Trump reversed his position last month, news organisations noted the move came after he had met with billionaire Jeff Yass, a major contributor to the Republican Party who reportedly holds a major financial stake in the company.
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The congressional vote marks the first time the federal government has sought to shut down a social media company in the US, potentially setting a precedent for future actions against Chinese-owned companies.
TikTok proved unable to allay concerns over data privacy and national security, coupled with allegations of mishandled user data and the company’s potential ties to the Chinese government. The app’s owner, ByteDance, is based in Beijing.
TikTok denies that Beijing authorities have demanded access to user data and instead argued that the planned ban infringes on freedoms of expression and innovation.
TikTok’s head of public policy for the Americas, Michael Beckerman, has slammed the bill as “unconstitutional” and vowed to challenge it in the courts.
“We’ll continue to fight,” he wrote to company staff on Saturday. “This legislation is a clear violation of the first-amendment rights of the 170 million Americans on TikTok.”
Last year a federal judge in Montana blocked the state’s ban on the use of TikTok, saying the measure violated users’ free-speech rights.
James Lewis of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said he believed that “TikTok’s lobbying effort backfired and only hardened congressional opposition” – but that nothing would change for TikTok users at least for a year.
Lewis predicted both a protracted legal battle and negotiations with Beijing on the terms of any potential public offering of shares for TikTok’s future.
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“ByteDance’s owners would like to cash out, but they need to make both Beijing and Washington happy at the same time, something that is a real challenge,” he said.
While describing TikTok as an “artefact” of an earlier time when the US was not as concerned about China, Lewis said that popular Chinese-owned companies Shein and Temu “should be looking over their shoulders” in light of the congressional result.
Nova Daly, a former US deputy assistant treasury secretary for CFIUS, the federal body that reviews foreign investments, hailed the vote as an “important moment” for all three branches of the government in addressing national-security concerns.
Daly, now a senior adviser at Washington law firm Wiley Rein, did not believe the bill’s swift bipartisan passage would create a precedent for other foreign-owned business.
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“If ByteDance does care about the viability of TikTok in the US and the many users of the platform, the way forward for it is fairly clear,” he added.
Caitlin Chin-Rothman, also of CSIS, described the bill’s passage as a “risky political move during an election year, particularly towards younger voters who are already feeling disillusioned with Biden’s record on Gaza and student loans”.
Speaking with reporters hours before the vote, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said the TikTok provision enjoyed significant support in the party. However, when asked about Trump’s about-face on the issue, McConnell had no comment.
More from South China Morning Post:
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- TikTok set to remove executive tasked with fending off US national security concerns over app’s China ties, sources say
- Why Biden and some state governors are still using TikTok even as US seeks to ban app
- US Federal Trade Commission could reach settlement with or sue TikTok over probe on children’s privacy, says source
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