A recent Politico scoop is certain to motivate lawmakers to act with more urgency on TikTok.
It’s looking more likely than ever before that Congress will pass legislation to sever TikTok from its Chinese Communist Party-tied parent, ByteDance.
The legislation passed by the House last month to force ByteDance to sell TikTok found a frosty reception in the Senate. Senator Maria Cantwell, who chairs the committee that has jurisdiction over the legislation, initially said she was concerned that the bill wouldn’t be able to survive a legal challenge. She said that she was seeking fixes to it but didn’t move with any expediency to get the bill to a vote.
House GOP leadership might just have broken that impasse. The broader security package House Speaker Mike Johnson unveiled yesterday includes a version of the House-passed bill. It’s part of a rider that also includes legislation to allow the transfer of seized Russian funds to Ukraine, new Iran sanctions, and other provisions addressing the fentanyl crisis. In short, these are proposals that are likely to receive a significant amount of support in the senate.
Crucially, this new bill addresses Cantwell’s concerns, by extending the period in which ByteDance needs to sell TikTok from six months in the original version to one year in the latest. Yesterday, she said that she’s “very happy” with the amended language and said that she will support the updated bill.
China’s embassy in Washington has also helped to move things along. Citing two sources yesterday, Politico reported that Chinese diplomats weighed in against the TikTok bill in separate meetings with congressional offices. Among other things, they argued that it’s unfair for Congress to target a Chinese company, when the U.S. would not treat a company of a different national origin the same way.
The report was an embarrassing blow to TikTok, which has fiercely denied that it is a Chinese company (despite the fact that ByteDance is headquartered in Beijing and led by several executives with connections to the CCP’s united-front organs). The Politico report quotes a TikTok spokesman stating that the outlet’s account “doesn’t pass the smell test.” In the next paragraph, it quotes a Chinese embassy spokesman’s statement all but confirming it and reiterating that the embassy works to ensure that “all Chinese companies” are treated fairly.
Apparently, Beijing’s diplomats in America haven’t yet come to understand the full extent of their unpopularity on Capitol Hill, despite the uproars that have followed reporting on their previous lobbying efforts there. The Politico scoop is certain to motivate lawmakers to act with more urgency on TikTok.