Trump And Co Do A 180 On TikTok Ban As It Now Gathers Steam

A TikTok ban is on the cards in the United States (US). But surprisingly, Donald Trump, who as US president had passed an executive order banning the popular Chinese video-sharing app, now stands against it.

In 2020, then-president Trump ordered a ban on new downloads of the TikTok app, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, citing national security concerns.

A proposal was even made for US companies to own a US entity of TikTok for managing domestic user data and content moderation. However, legal challenges and Trump's impending departure from office prevented the ban and US industry involvement from happening.

President Biden revoked the Trump-era bans on TikTok and WeChat in mid-2021 through an executive order months after taking office.

US lawmakers are now making moves to ban TikTok once again.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee, in a rare unanimous vote of 50-0, recently approved bipartisan legislation requiring ByteDance to divest its ownership of the app within 165 days or be expelled from app stores and web-hosting services. The bill was unveiled alongside the China Select Committee.

The “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act” imposes similar restrictions on any app that is purportedly controlled by US' foreign adversaries, including China, Iran, Russia, or North Korea. It establishes a process for President Biden, or any subsequent president, to designate apps that should be prohibited under the law.

The House Majority Leader announced plans to bring the "critical national security bill" to the House floor for a vote early this week. Two-thirds of the members will have to vote in favour of the bill for it to win approval. The White House has indicated President Biden would sign the bill.

This movement should have ideally pleased Trump and the conservatives who swear by him. But that was not to be.

Taking to his social media platform Truth Social, the former US president said: “If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business. I don’t want Facebook, who cheated in the last Election, doing better. They are a true Enemy of the People!”

In saying so, Trump seems to have made his choice for who he considers the greater evil between TikTok and Facebook, and it’s not the one with the Chinese parent company and a large American user base of 1,700 lakh.

Only about four years ago, the former president had said TikTok's data collection posed a threat by potentially allowing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) access to Americans' personal and proprietary information.

He expressed concerns that this access could enable China to track the locations of federal employees and contractors, compile dossiers of personal information for blackmail purposes, and engage in corporate espionage.

These concerns about TikTok have now supposedly taken a backseat in comparison to who he believes are “a true Enemy of the People.”

Trump has been a critic of Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, for revoking his access to Facebook and Instagram after two of his posts were removed during the 6 January 2021 US Capitol riot. His accounts were reinstated in February 2023.

Interestingly, while Biden's re-election campaign joined TikTok last month, Trump's has not.

Biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who ran for president before suspending his campaign and endorsing Trump, threw his weight in support of the former president’s opposition to a TikTok ban. He put out a video on X in which he said the legislation “doesn’t make any sense.”

Ramaswamy said concerns surrounding TikTok, such as addiction among kids and possible sharing of US user data with the CCP, need to be tackled but aren’t specific to TikTok.

“It isn’t limited to just TikTok or even Chinese-owned companies in the US. It expands to include even so-called US companies that are still beholden to the CCP because they do business in China,” he said.

As an example, he cited reporting from a “couple of years ago” in the Wall Street Journal that showed Airbnb was “providing US user data to the CCP as a condition for doing business.”

“Ban US companies from providing US user data to China… But it’s beyond silly to pick just one random company and go after them because that is temporarily a politically popular thing to do, while actually failing to solve the actual problem that applies to Chinese companies and US companies alike, including the US companies that do business in China,” Ramaswamy said in the video.

In contrast, the former US presidential candidate was “very open to banning TikTok outright” in February 2023.

Kellyanne Conway, the former senior aide to President Trump, is also said to be advocating for TikTok in Congress, for which she is being compensated by the conservative Club for Growth. She has reportedly had multiple meetings with lawmakers in recent months regarding the app, according to a report in Politico.

Billionaire investor Jeff Yass, a donor to the Club for Growth, holds a 15 per cent stake in ByteDance. Club for Growth leaders have strongly opposed efforts to ban TikTok. Former president Trump praised Yass as "fantastic" during a Club for Growth retreat, as Trump sought Yass' support for his presidential campaign.

Republican senator from Kentucky Rand Paul also took to X to say, “If Congress bans TikTok, they will be acting just like the Chinese communists who have also banned TikTok... Why not just defend the first amendment?,” which drew a response from Elon Musk: “Trump’s statement there is correct.”

TikTok, meanwhile, encouraged its users to contact their congressional representatives to protest the new bipartisan legislation, claiming that a ban would violate their constitutional right to free expression and negatively impact businesses and creators nationwide.

Consequently, congressional offices on Capitol Hill were at the receiving end of endless phone calls and social media posts last week.

Reports indicate that both teenagers and the elderly implored congressional staff, highlighting their extensive use of the app. TikTok creators also took to the platform, urging their followers to join the cause.

Lawmakers face a significant challenge in arguing that TikTok's national security threat outweighs the desires of the millions of individuals and businesses that use the app, given its vast scale.

Civil society groups argue that even if the bill's language doesn't explicitly censor TikTok or its users, its ultimate impact would be to do just that.