The House of Representatives passed a bill with broad bipartisan support on Wednesday that would force the Chinese owner of TikTok to either sell the wildly popular video app or ban it in the United States.
The move escalates a showdown between Beijing and Washington over control of a wide range of technologies that could impact national security, free speech and the social media industry.
Republican leaders rushed the bill through the House with limited debate, passing it by a lopsided vote of 352-65, reflecting broad support for legislation that would directly target China in an election year.
The action came despite TikTok’s efforts to mobilize its 170 million U.S. users against the measure and amid the Biden administration’s efforts to convince lawmakers that China’s ownership of the platform poses a significant national security risk to the United States states, including the ability to interfere in elections.
The result was a bipartisan coalition behind the measure that included Republicans who defied former President Donald J. Trump by supporting it and Democrats who also threw their weight behind a bill that President Biden said he would sign.
The path to passage of the bill is difficult in the Senate, where Sen. Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and majority leader, has been noncommittal about bringing it up for a vote and where some lawmakers have vowed to fight it. And even if it passes the Senate and becomes law, it will likely face legal challenges.
But Wednesday’s vote marked the first time a measure that could broadly ban TikTok from consumers was approved by a full chamber of Congress. The app has been under threat since 2020, with lawmakers increasingly arguing that Beijing’s relationship with TikTok parent company ByteDance poses national security risks. The bill aims to force ByteDance to sell TikTok to non-Chinese owners within six months. The president would agree to the sale if it would address national security concerns. If this sale didn’t go through, the app would be banned.
Rep. Mike Gallagher, a Wisconsin Republican who is among the lawmakers spearheading the bill, said before the floor vote that it “forces TikTok to break with the Chinese Communist Party.”
“This is a common-sense measure to protect our national security,” he said.
Alex Haurek, a spokesman for TikTok, said in a statement that the House process “was secret and the bill was blocked for one reason: it is a ban.”
“We hope the Senate considers the facts, listens to its constituents and recognizes the impact on the economy – seven million small businesses – and the 170 million Americans who use our service,” he added.
On Wednesday, ahead of the House vote, Beijing condemned the move by U.S. lawmakers and rejected the idea that TikTok posed a threat to the United States. At a daily news conference, Wang Wenbin, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, accused Washington of “resorting to hegemonic measures when it cannot succeed in fair competition.”
If enacted, the bill would likely intensify a cold war between the United States and China over control of many key technologies, including solar panels, electric vehicles and semiconductors.
Mr. Biden has announced restrictions on how U.S. financial firms can invest in Chinese companies and restricted the sale of Americans’ sensitive data, such as location and health information, to data brokers who could sell it to China. Platforms such as Facebook and YouTube are blocked in China, and Beijing said last year that it would reject a sale of TikTok.
TikTok has said it has gone to great lengths to protect U.S. user data and third-party monitoring of the platform, and that no government can influence the company’s recommendation model. It also said there was no evidence that Beijing used TikTok to obtain U.S. user data or influence Americans’ views, two of the concerns lawmakers have cited.
In an unusually aggressive move for a tech company, TikTok last week urged users to call their representatives to protest the bill, saying: “This legislation has a predetermined outcome: a complete ban on TikTok in the United States.”
TikTok has spent more than $1 billion on a sweeping plan called Project Texas that aims to process sensitive U.S. user data separately from the rest of the company’s operations. This plan has been under review for several years by a panel called the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).
Two of the lawmakers behind the bill, Mr. Gallagher and Raja Krishnamoorthi, an Illinois Democrat, said last week that the lawmakers acted because CFIUS “did not solve the problem.”
It is very unusual for a bill to have broad bipartisan support but at the same time divide both parties. President Biden has said he would sign the bill into law, but House leaders such as Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, the No. 2 Democrat in the House, voted against the bill. Mr. Trump said he opposed the bill, but many of his staunchest allies in the House, like Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, the No. 4 Republican in the House, voted for it.
The vote was a kind of “hunt for all,” with unusual alliances for and against the bill. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California and former speaker of the House, sat in the chamber and nodded along with far-right Republicans like Rep. Dan Crenshaw, Republican of Texas, as they expressed support for the bill. At one point, she stood up and walked to the Republican side of the aisle to speak with Rep. Chip Roy, a far-right Republican from Texas who had been a vocal supporter of the bill.
Several Republicans and Democrats expressed their opposition to the bill due to concerns about free speech and the popularity of TikTok in the United States. Some legal experts said the bill, if enacted, would likely be subject to First Amendment judicial review.
Rep. Maxwell Frost, a Florida Democrat, said Tuesday: “I’m not just no, I’m an absolute no.” He said the legislation violates First Amendment rights. “I hear all the time from students who are getting their information, the truth about what happened in this country, from content creators on TikTok.” He said he was concerned about Americans’ data, but “this bill solves that problem not.”
After a heated hearing with TikTok CEO Shou Chew, there was no legislation last year despite bipartisan support to regulate the app. But concern among lawmakers has grown even greater in recent months. Many of them say TikTok’s content recommendations could be used for misinformation, a concern that has escalated in the United States since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
“In the meantime, including on October 7, a lot happened, including the fact that Osama bin Laden’s ‘Letter to America’ went viral on TikTok and the platform continued to have dramatic differences in content compared to other social media platforms .” “said Mr. Krishnamoorthi in an interview.
There’s also the possibility that the bill, even if it is signed into law and survives court challenges, could fail under a new administration. Mr. Trump, who tried to ban TikTok or force its sale in 2020, publicly changed his position on the app last week. In a television appearance on Monday, Mr. Trump said the app posed a threat to national security but that a ban would help Facebook, a platform the former president criticized.
“There are a lot of young kids on TikTok who go crazy without it,” he said.
Mr Trump’s administration had threatened to remove TikTok from American app stores if ByteDance did not sell its stake in the app. ByteDance even appeared poised to sell a stake in the app to Walmart and Oracle, where executives were close to Mr. Trump.
That plan went awry in federal court. Several judges blocked Mr. Trump’s proposed ban from taking effect.
Mr Biden’s administration has tried to find a legislative solution. The White House provided “technical assistance” to Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Krishnamoorthi in drafting their bill, Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said at a briefing last week. When the bill was introduced, a National Security Council spokesman was quick to call the legislation “an important and welcome step in addressing” the threat of technology putting Americans’ sensitive data at risk.
The administration has repeatedly sent national security officials to Capitol Hill to privately advocate for the legislation and issue strong warnings about the risks associated with TikTok’s current ownership. The White House briefed lawmakers ahead of last week’s 50-0 committee vote that sent the bill to the full House of Representatives.
On Tuesday, officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Justice Department spoke to lawmakers in a classified briefing about national security concerns related to TikTok.
Mr Gallagher and Mr Krishnamoorthi had previously supported a bill aimed at banning TikTok. The latest bill was seen as a sort of last stand against the company for Mr. Gallagher, who recently said he would not run for a fifth term because “the drafters intended citizens to serve in Congress for a season and then go into their private lives.” return to life.”
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2024-03-13 21:28:34
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