A TikTok ban is imminent: What are the financial stakes?

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The disappearance of TikTok threatens to erase billions of dollars from the U.S. economy and remove an important platform used by millions of American businesses and social-media entrepreneurs to connect with customers.

TikTok’s demise won’t dent the U.S. economy overall, but it is poised to crimp a sizable sub-economy that has sprung up around the hugely popular app used by roughly 170 million Americans. Putting a precise figure on TikTok’s impact across the U.S.

economy is difficult, though the company has touted a figure of more than $20 billion a year. Ella Livingston has a pretty clear idea of how it will affect her. She says a ban will cut off about $25,000 in monthly sales for Cocoa Asante, the artisan chocolate company she owns in Chattanooga, Tenn.

She is anticipating having to lay off four to five part-time workers. “It would be very, very painful," said Livingston, 31, a former high-school math teacher who credits TikTok for helping her startup rapidly grow in 2023 after an influencer posted a flattering review on the app about one of her company’s products, unprompted. “It went viral on a Friday night, and by Sunday I wrote my resignation letter." A ban is expected to start Sunday after the Supreme Court upheld a federal law Friday that requires TikTok to separate from parent company ByteDance or else be banned.

TikTok, girding for a possible loss, has been planning to shut down the app in the U.S. to comply with the law and avoid exposing companies that sell or distribute the app to legal liability. Ella Livingston, center, owns an artisan chocolate company in Chattanooga, Tenn., that relies on TikTok for sales.