House passes bill that could ban TikTok in U.S.
The House of Representatives is sending a bill that would require TikTok’s Chinese owner to divest the social app's U.S. operation to the Senate.
The bill, H.R.7521, or the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act,” prohibits distributing, maintaining, or providing Internet hosting services for any application directly or indirectly operated by TikTok parent ByteDance Ltd. or TikTok itself (including their subsidiaries or successors).
The bill also applies to applications operated by any other social media company that is controlled by a "foreign adversary" and has been determined by the president to present a "significant threat to national security."
If the bill becomes law, ByteDance would have six months to either divest its U.S. TikTok operation, or else U.S. app stores and Internet hosting services could not support TikTok or any other ByteDance apps.
President Biden has publicly indicated he will sign the bill if it becomes law. However, first it has to pass in the U.S. Senate, where CNBC reports there is less support for legislation restricting TikTok than in the House, where the bill passed in a bipartisan 352-65 vote (one member voted "present").
In addition, in a recent CNBC interview, former President Trump, who pushed TikTok to divest its U.S. business during his presidential term (see below for more details), said a U.S. TikTok ban would serve to make Facebook parent Meta bigger and called Facebook an “enemy of the people.”
Although Biden has indicated he would sign a bill requiring ByteDance to divest TikTok in the U.S. or face a ban, his presidential campaign recently opened a TikTok account promoting his candidacy.
TikTok attracts government attention
TikTok operates an e-commerce store in the U.S., partners with numerous U.S. retailers, and was ranked the second-most-used social platform by American teens by the Pew Research Center. However, the Biden administration has been continuing to express serious regulatory concerns, which began under the Trump administration.
Citing possible connections between TikTok parent company ByteDance and the Chinese Communist Party, the Trump administration had been actively attempting to ban TikTok from operating in the U.S. unless it established a separate business with at least partial U.S. ownership.
In December 2022, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) introduced bipartisan legislation to ban TikTok from operating in the United States. And in May 2023, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte signed legislation that would make Montana the first state in the U.S. to completely ban any mobile app store from providing TikTok to any users in the state, but it is currently on hold by a federal judge's order.
Both TikTok and the Chinese government have publicly denied any security risks for U.S. users. However, TikTok may already be taking a new look at creating a separate U.S. operation that would include Walmart and Oracle.