The bipartisan legislation, led by Reps. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) and Raja Krishnamorthi (D-Ill.), is already scheduled to be marked up by the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
A bipartisan group of Members of Congress introduced legislation on Tuesday that would force TikTok to sever its ties to China’s government or be prevented from accessing app stores or web hosting services in the United States.
Specifically, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act requires that TikTok be “fully divested such that it is no longer controlled by a PRC-based entity” in order to continue to use U.S. app stores and web hosting services. That means parent company ByteDance would need to divest its ownership of TikTok in order for the app to continue to access the U.S. market.
And while TikTok and ByteDance are the only two companies specifically named in the bill, the legislation also includes language giving the President the power to name other social media apps as a national security threat, setting up a potential ban unless they cut ties to entities controlled by a foreign adversary.
Members of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) introduced the legislation, led by panel Chairman Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) and Ranking Member Raja Krishnamorthi (D-Ill.). The House Energy and Commerce Committee scheduled a markup of the bill for Thursday.
“This is my message to TikTok: break up with the Chinese Communist Party or lose access to your American users,” Gallagher said in a statement. “America’s foremost adversary has no business controlling a dominant media platform in the United States. TikTok’s time in the United States is over unless it ends its relationship with CCP-controlled ByteDance.”
Added Krishnamorthi: “So long as it is owned by ByteDance and thus required to collaborate with the CCP, TikTok poses critical threats to our national security.”
The debate over whether to ban TikTok is pretty heated, with some arguing a ban would infringe upon free speech rights. Meanwhile, national security experts have long warned the app poses a huge risk, giving China both access to Americans’ data and granting the CCP messaging control over a communications platform that reaches 150 million U.S. users. Lawmakers in the U.S. and other countries have moved to ban the app, and polling shows nearly 60% of Americans see TikTok as a national security threat.
Sponsors of the new legislation say their bill would not infringe upon speech rights, as it is “focused entirely on foreign adversary control—not the content of speech being shared. This bill only applies to specifically defined social media apps subject to the control of foreign adversaries, as defined by Congress.” Thus, if TikTok divests from CCP control, it will not face any kind of ban.
Here at the Alliance for American Manufacturing, we haven’t focused on the back-and-forth over TikTok as much as other China-related issues, like trade. Most of our attention has been on SHEIN and Temu, retailers who have used TikTok to hawk their artificially cheap products to Americans (learn more about that here and here and here and here).
But as I wrote last year when TikTok CEO Shou Chew testified before Congress, the debate over TikTok is key to understanding the current state of U.S.-China relations. There’s no question that the United States and China are locked in a competition for the 21st century, with the two nations going head-to-head on everything from electric vehicle production to foreign policy issues.
With that in mind, it all really comes down to this: Will the United States continue to allow the Chinese Communist Party to control a highly addictive communications platform that directly reaches 150 million Americans?