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US app stores will be banned from offering TikTok in 270 days unless its Chinese owner sells the video-sharing platform after Congress passed a security package that includes measures to counter Chinese threats.
The Senate voted 79-18 to approve the bill on Tuesday, giving ByteDance the go-ahead to divest from TikTok to avoid the ban. TikTok is expected to sue to try to block the legislation after a lobbying campaign failed to shake Congressional support for the bill.
President Joe Biden has pledged to sign the $95 billion plan passed by the Senate, which includes funding for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. His team helped draft the TikTok language with members of the Chinese House of Representatives committee, which introduced the bill last month.
Banning TikTok from stores would mean the app would no longer receive updates, making it increasingly difficult to use as operating systems evolve and ultimately rendering it obsolete.
The bill quickly gained traction after briefings from security officials who warned that Beijing could force ByteDance to hand over the personal data of the 170 million Americans who use the app.
The House passed the bill last month, but it faced hurdles in the Senate due to concerns about free speech. In a move that helped speed passage of the measure, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson paired it with funding for Ukraine, creating a package that most senators do not support. ‘would probably not object.
Speaking on the Senate floor earlier Tuesday, Maria Cantwell, the Democratic chairwoman of the Commerce Committee who previously had reservations about the bill, urged her colleagues to support it.
“Congress is acting to prevent foreign adversaries from conducting indiscriminate espionage and surveillance operations, harming vulnerable Americans, our military and our U.S. government personnel,” she said.
TikTok has denied that the Chinese government has any control over the app. But Mark Warner, Democratic chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Tuesday that the fact that the Chinese government had pressured members of Congress on the bill showed “how much [Chinese president] Xi Jinping is invested in this product.”
The senators also urged young Americans to understand that Congress was trying to protect them, not ban the popular app.
“Many Americans, especially younger Americans, are rightly skeptical,” Warner said. “Ultimately, they didn’t see what Congress saw. They did not participate in classified briefings held by Congress, which delved into some of the threats posed by foreign control of TikTok.”
The Trump administration previously tried to ban TikTok, but the company blocked the move in court. The Biden administration and Congress hope the new bill will be more likely to withstand legal scrutiny.
“The House vote underscores the waning influence of China’s corporate champions in Washington,” said Craig Singleton, a China expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “TikTok’s loss, despite its enormous lobbying, sets a troubling precedent for other Chinese companies seeking to circumvent regulation, such as drone maker DJI.”
Most China experts in Washington don’t think Beijing will let ByteDance hand over the algorithm that made the app successful, raising the specter of the end of TikTok’s presence in the United States, unless it won’t succeed in court.
