HOUSE $OCKS TIKTOK
Pols vote to force China’s sale of app
House lawmakers voted Wednesday to compel Chinese Communist Party-tied ByteDance to sell off TikTok within six months or face the social media app being banned in the US — amid elevated national security concerns and despite fullthroated protests from fervent fans.
The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act passed the House, 352-65, easily overcoming the two-thirds requirement.
The bill now heads to the Senate and an uncertain future — with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) non-committal Wednesday about when or whether he will bring the legislation up for a vote
“The Senate will review the legislation when it comes over from the House,” the Brooklyn Democrat said in a statement.
However, President Biden, who signed a law in December 2022 prohibiting TikTok on government devices except for certain law-enforcement-related reasons, has indicated he will approve the bill if it passes Congress and press secretary Karine JeanPierre told reporters that “we hope the Senate takes action, and takes this up very quickly.”
If the bill does become law, ByteDance would be required to spin off TikTok within 180 days. If that does not happen, companies like Google and Apple will be restricted from offering US-based web hosting or making TikTok available in their app stores.
Additionally, the bill authorizes the Biden administration to prohibit apps linked to four adversary nations: China, Iran, North Korea and Russia.
To ban those apps, government agencies must agree on the threat and must make evidence available to Congress.
More than 100 million Americans are estimated to use TikTok regularly, and the company has fought hard against the legislation, calling it a “total ban.”
“This will damage millions of businesses, deny artists an audience, and destroy the livelihoods of countless creators across the country,” a TikTok spokesperson said.
China’s foreign ministry also argued against the bill, with spokesman Wang Wenbin claiming Wednesday: “In recent years, though the US has never found any evidence of TikTok posing a threat to the US’s national security, it has never stopped going after TikTok.
“Such practice of resorting to hegemonic moves when one could not succeed in fair competition disrupts the normal operation of businesses, undermines the confidence of international investors in the investment environment, sabotages the normal economic and trade order in the world and will eventually backfire on the US itself,” Wang added.
Critics of Beijing like
Sean King, senior vice president at Park Strategists political consulting firm, told The Post that the attacks were “a little rich considering the People’s Republic of China itself outright bans Facebook, Twitter and heavily censors its own Internet providers.”
The measure also got a bipartisan boost Wednesday from the top two lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “We are united in our concern about the national security threat posed by TikTok — a platform with enormous power to influence and divide Americans whose parent company ByteDance remains legally required to do the bidding of the Chinese Communist Party,” Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Vice Chairman Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said in a joint statement.
The bill was proposed by Reps. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), the top Republican and Democrat on the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. The pair cited Beijing’s laws, which stipulate that “all organizations and citizens shall support, assist, and cooperate with national intelligence efforts.”
In particular, national security experts are concerned about China gaining access to TikTok user browsing history, biometric identifiers, location data and more.
“You wouldn’t allow a radio tower owned by the Chinese to be put up right in the middle of Washington, DC, and then allow it to just put out Chinese propaganda,” Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) said before the vote.
“That’s exactly what TikTok can be used for because millions of Americans are addicted to it,” he added.
“Today we’re sending a message to the CCP that we are going to deflate the 140 million spy balloons that they have installed on American phones,” Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa) crowed.
In his floor remarks, Krishnamoorthi emphasized that the legislation was not meant to be a ban on the app.
“Our intention is for TikTok to continue to operate,” he said, “but not under the control of the Chinese Communist Party.”
Earlier this year, TikTok CEO Shou Chew committed to a $1.5 billion investment in so-called Project Texas, intended to push American data into servers run by Oracle.
“We have not been asked for any data by the Chinese government and we have never provided it,” Chew stressed to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The bill was opposed by a rare coalition of far-left and far-right lawmakers, some of whom cited free speech concerns, while others seemed to take their cues from former President Donald Trump — who attempted to ban TikTok in 2020, but opposes the current bill after meeting with billionaire GOP donor and TikTok stakeholder Jeff Yass.
“Without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger, and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people,” Trump told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Monday.