Biden says he’ll sign proposed legislation to ban TikTok if Congress passes it
U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday endorsed legislation that could lead to the popular video-sharing app TikTok being banned in the United States, a move that comes amid growing concern in Washington about keeping Americans’ data out of China’s hands.
The legislation that passed through the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee unanimously on Thursday calls on China’s ByteDance to divest its ownership of TikTok — or effectively face a U.S. ban. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson also supports the bill and has indicated it would soon come up for a full vote in the House.
“If they pass it, I’ll sign it,” Biden said when asked by reporters about the legislation.
The White House had provided technical support in the drafting of the bill, though White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said this week the TikTok legislation “still needs some work” to get to a place where Biden would endorse it.
Former President Donald Trump, the likely Republican nominee, came out in a Truth Social post on Thursday saying he opposed a ban because it would help rival social media platform Facebook. Trump’s opposition to the legislation comes after he issued — and then rescinded — an executive action late in his presidency intended to ban TikTok and another popular app, WeChat.
Trump’s pushback puts him on the opposite side of the debate of powerful Republicans, including Johnson and Republican House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who has called the legislation a “critical national security bill.”
Both the FBI and the Federal Communications Commission have warned that TikTok owner ByteDance could share user data — such as browsing history, location and biometric identifiers — with China’s authoritarian government. TikTok said it has never done that and wouldn’t do so if asked. The U.S. government also hasn’t provided evidence of that happening.
Biden, in 2022, banned the use of TikTok by almost all the federal government’s nearly 4 million employees.