Illustration by Gracelynn Wan for Forbes
On Friday, John Moolenaar (R-MI), chairman of the House Special Committee on China, and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) met in first place. Letters sent to the CEOs of Apple, Google and TikTok to remind them that keeping the TikTok app online beyond January nineteenth is a violation of the law. In letters to Apple and Google, the committee wrote: “Congress has given TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, sufficient time – 233 days and counting” to search out a buyer for the app. “As you know, without a qualified divestiture, the law makes it unlawful” to maintain TikTok within the app stores.
“According to US law [Apple and Google] must take the necessary steps to ensure this [they] may fully comply with this requirement by January 19, 2025.”
Apple and Google, in addition to hosting firms like Oracle and Amazon Web Services, could face hefty fines in the event that they proceed to work with TikTok beyond the deadline set by Congress. Unless TikTok can persuade the courts to stop the law from taking effect, Apple and Google shall be forced to remove it from app stores on the nineteenth. TikTok’s agreements with American cloud firms may also be halted, which mockingly could make U.S. users’ data more easily accessible from China.
Moolenaar and Krishnamoorthi also wrote a letter to TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, imploring him to start out on the lookout for a buyer. “We urge TikTok to immediately conduct a qualified divestiture,” they said. TikTok and ByteDance have claimed in legal filings that they can’t and won’t sell.
President Biden signed the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act in April with broad support from each political parties in Congress. The law requires TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell it to a non-Chinese company or ban it within the United States. The background was concern that the Chinese government could force TikTok’s parent company to make use of it either as a surveillance tool or to spread propaganda amongst Americans. TikTok has challenged the law within the powerful D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that the forced divestment or ban of such a preferred communications platform is a violation of Americans’ First Amendment right to speak how and where they see fit hold. But the corporate lost its case – in an unusual interpretation of First Amendment law, the court ruled last week that in passing the law, Congress had acted “solely to protect their speech rights “from a foreign adversary nation.”
TikTok has promised to appeal to the US Supreme Court. TikTok, Apple and Google didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
