Republicans on the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee advanced a bill that would grant President Biden the ability to legally ban TikTok in the U.S.
The committee voted 24-to-16 along party lines to approve Chair Michael
McCaul’s (R-Texas) Deterring America’s Technology Adversaries Act (DATA
Act).
- The bill, introduced on Friday,
aims to give the Biden administration the power to ban foreign-owned
apps such as TikTok, which is owned by China-based ByteDance.
- It would lift longstanding rules that protect certain creative content from U.S. sanctions.
- It
would require Biden to inflict penalties, including a possible ban,
against ByteDance if it's determined that the company knowingly shared
TikTok user data with "any foreign person” linked to China's government.
- McCaul said he believes TikTok is "too dangerous" to be on the phones of lawmakers and children.
- “Anyone
with TikTok downloaded on their device has given the [Chinese Communist
Party] a backdoor to all their personal information,” he said.
- U.S.
Rep. Gregory Meeks, the committee's top Democrat, argued that the
legislation could damage U.S. global alliances, destroy jobs, and
"undercut core American values of free speech and free enterprise."
- Prior
to the vote, TikTok called it "unfortunate" if the committee supported
legislation to "censor millions of Americans, and do so based not on
actual intelligence, but on a basic misunderstanding of our corporate
structure."
- The measure now advances to the House floor, where the full chamber could vote on it as early as this month.
