TikTok Divestment Bill Moves Ahead in House as Trump Wavers

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(Bloomberg) — Legislation that would force TikTok’s Chinese parent to sell it or face a ban in the US is picking up speed in Congress, posing a dilemma for Republican lawmakers after former President Donald Trump reversed his previous stance and suggested the app shouldn’t be banned after all.

Asked if the bill would pass the House of Representatives when it comes up for a vote Wednesday as expected, Steve Scalise, the No. 2 House Republican, said, “yes it will.” Representative Bob Good, the conservative Freedom Caucus chair, said he was evaluating the bill but was leaning toward supporting it.

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The legislation, introduced last week by a bipartisan group led by House China Committee Chairman Mike Gallagher, would block app stores and Internet service providers such as those run by Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google from offering the platform unless TikTok’s Chinese parent ByteDance Ltd. sells it within six months.

Earlier: TikTok Divestment Effort Gains Steam as US House Girds for Vote

The bill got a boost last week when the Energy and Commerce Committee voted 50-0 to approve it. But Republicans in both the House and the Senate must weigh how to proceed after Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee in November’s presidential election, told CNBC he wasn’t sure it should be banned.

Trump, who had signed an executive order as president to outlaw TikTok, said that Meta Inc.’s Facebook, not TikTok, was the real threat. He also suggested he was wary of alienating younger Americans who use the popular short-video app.

“There are a lot of young kids on TikTok who will go crazy without it,” Trump told CNBC. “The thing I don’t like is that without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger, and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people, along with a lot of the media.”

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Trump spoke as the Office of the Director for National Intelligence issued its annual report on global threats Monday, including a passage saying China had reportedly used TikTok to target “candidates from both political parties during the US midterm election cycle in 2022.” At a hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee, FBI Director Christopher Wray said there were “significant” national security concerns associated with TikTok, reiterating his earlier warnings about the platform.

Officials from the FBI, Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence were set to brief House members Tuesday ahead of Wednesday’s vote on the bill, according to a person familiar with the plans.

TikTok has consistently denied that it has shared, or will share, any US user data with Beijing and has tried to assuage US concerns by spending more than $1.5 billion to isolate its US operations and agreeing to oversight from American partner Oracle Corp. It has said the legislation would lead to “a total ban of TikTok in the United States.”

Previous legislative attempts to restrict TikTok nationwide have failed, and this one would still have to clear legislative obstacles in the Senate, where it doesn’t yet have a sponsor. But crucially for the bill’s chances, some senators suggested that the House legislation might get a favorable reception from them as well.

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“We can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” said Senator Mark Warner,  chairman of the Intelligence Committee. “There are ways that we could have been more certain that it would stand up to legal challenge, but this version may be better than certain earlier versions.”

TikTok has also reportedly enlisted Republican supporters of Trump to defend the bill. Politico reported Monday that the conservative Club for Growth was paying former Trump aide Kellyanne Conway to advocate for TikTok.

On the Democratic side of the aisle, House Progressive Caucus chair Pramila Jayapal said her group was still evaluating the bill, while Democratic Representative Ro Khanna said he was a no.

“if you want to protect people’s data, pass an Internet bill of rights to do that, don’t ban the political speech of 170 million americans,” he said in a message on TikTok.

As for the former president’s comments, “Trump’s going to do what Trump’s going to do,” Senator Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican of West Virginia said. “I’ll just leave it at that.”

“What are the fundamental issues?” Capito said. “Safety online for young people. And safety of the data.”

—With assistance from Maeve Sheehey and Jonathan Tamari.

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