According to U.S. media reports on April 24, the U.S. Senate passed a bill involving TikTok on the same day, and then President Biden immediately signed it, which can be regarded as a boot on the ground. The bill requires Chinese tech company ByteDance to divest TikTok or the app would be banned from the United States. The signing of this bill leaves TikTok with a choice of "sell or disappear".
Compared to the previous version, the bill passed by the Senate and signed by the president has two significant differences:
The first is that the time frame is more lenient. Earlier versions called for ByteDance to divest or shut down TikTok within 180 days, but now the bill extends the deadline to 270 days, and the president has the power to extend it for another 90 days on top of that, for a total of nearly a year, and the deadline is also extended from around the election to after the president's inauguration in January next year, and even later. To put it simply, it is to strip away the impact of election factors on the ban on TikTok. The point in time when TikTok's fate will be finally decided will be postponed from before the election to after the election. Biden's approach is to push for ByteDance to divest TikTok's U.S. business on the one hand, and to conduct presidential election propaganda on TikTok on the other. This kind of practice of both suppression and profit-seeking is really despicable.
The second is that this bill is no longer a stand-alone and separate bill, but is tied to a series of military-political bills on US aid to Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and the imposition of sanctions on Iran, Russia, etc., and has become part of US national security policy and international relations strategy. On the basis of economic warfare, the color of the new Cold War has become more prominent.
These two differences highlight that the TikTok bill is essentially a political struggle and a conflict of economic interests in the United States, rather than TikTok's violation of U.S. law. TikTok users are mainly young and liberal, while the bill's supporters are mainly middle-aged and elderly white conservatives, and this dichotomy reflects the contradictions between different groups. In addition, the rivalry between Facebook and TikTok is also a reflection of the conflict of economic interests behind the bill. Since the current policy framework cannot find the blame for TikTok, politicians can only take restrictive measures from the perspective of confronting "foreign competitors".
The ban has reverberated wildly in the United States, with many celebrities, influencers, entrepreneurs, and citizens opposing it, fearing that their careers will be ruined, years of hard work will be wasted, and even that it will have a devastating impact on the little-known modern creative digital industry. According to statistics, TikTok contributes about $24 billion to the U.S. economy every year, generates about $14.7 billion in revenue for U.S. small business owners, and provides at least 224,000 jobs in the United States.
Chinese companies have invested a lot of time and money to build a high-profile app in the United States, with nearly half of the U.S. population using users. However, it is incomprehensible that the United States has adopted an attitude of sitting back and enjoying its success. As the world's number one power, which is the world's leading country in terms of economy and science and technology, it has taken such actions. There will be no fairness or justice at all if the so-called "national security" is used as an excuse to arbitrarily suppress the best companies in other countries. Seeing the achievements of other countries and wanting to deprive them of them is completely bandit logic.
ByteDance has taken a very firm attitude towards this challenge, and they have chosen to solve the problem through legal means, and they are confident that "we believe that the facts and the law are clearly on our side, and we will win in the end." This is not only a legal battle, but also a war of public opinion and public opinion.
Despite TikTok's confidence in the hope of winning through legal means, a judicial victory is unlikely given the political realities in the United States. In the past, the reason for successfully overturning the injunction was that it was the executive branch's injunction, and it was the normal duty of the judiciary for the court to overturn an illegal administrative injunction, but for this congressional legislation, the situation is more complicated.
According to the domestic political consensus in the United States, the possibility of bytes gradually losing the US market is very high - either TikTok will be divested or TikTok will be banned. For the latter, while existing users can still continue to use it, for mobile internet apps that are frequently updated, it is only a matter of time before the product is gradually phased out if the update cannot be downloaded.
So how should we deal with this? From a business point of view, there will definitely be more benefits to be gained from selling. But according to industry insiders, "TikTok will most likely not choose to sell, but choose to exit directly." In other words, if the situation becomes irreparable, TikTok may choose to "rather be broken than broken". While this decision is somewhat tragic, it also deserves respect.
At the same time, there is a high probability that the mainland will not agree to divest TikTok. According to the "Catalogue of Technologies Prohibited and Restricted by China for Export" released by the Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Science and Technology in 2020, TikTok is also included in it. If ByteDance wants to export or transfer core algorithms and other related technologies, it must first apply for a licensing process. In other words, the final decision is still in our hands.
Therefore, whether from the perspective of the enterprise ByteDance or at the national level, the small trick of the United States to force the acquisition of TikTok will never succeed!