US House to vote next week on bill that gives ByteDance 165 days to divest TikTok or face ban
Also Read: 'I will not bow down': US President Joe Biden tells Russia's Vladimir Putin at State of the Union address 2024 Representative Mike Gallagher, the Republican chairman of the House select China committee, and Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, the panel's top Democrat, introduced legislation to address national security concerns posed by Chinese ownership of the app. The bill would give ByteDance 165 days to divest TikTok; if it did not, app stores operated by Apple, Google and others could not legally offer TikTok or provide web hosting services to ByteDance-controlled applications.
“TikTok could live on and people could do whatever they want on it provided there is that separation," Gallagher said, urging US ByteDance investors to support a sale. Also Read: US Fed is ‘not far’ from gaining confidence needed to cut interest rates, says Powell “It is not a ban - think of this as a surgery designed to remove the tumor and thereby save the patient in the process." TikTok has argued that the bill amounts to a ban and it is not clear if China would approve any sale, or that it could be divested in six months.
The app says it has not and would not share US user data with the Chinese government. “This legislation has a predetermined outcome: a total ban of TikTok in the United States," the company said after the vote.
“The government is attempting to strip 170 million Americans of their Constitutional right to free expression. This will damage millions of businesses, deny artists an audience, and destroy the livelihoods of countless creators across the country." Also Read: White House race: Biden versus Trump again In 2020, then US President Donald Trump tried to ban the app, which has about 170 million US users, but
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