Commentary
Even before President-elect Donald Trump is sworn into office on Jan. 20, the first shot in the next battle of the trade war between the United States and the Chinese regime may have already been fired. That’s because, on Jan. 19, the Chinese-owned social media platform must either be sold to a U.S. company or be banned from the United States.
If the latter happens, an estimated 150 million to 170 million active users in the United States will lose access to the popular site, which has more than 1 billion active users worldwide. Companies such as Apple and Google, as well as internet hosting providers, would be forced to stop supporting TikTok, which would end users’ access to the app in the United States.
Biden’s Law Has Support From Supreme Court
The source of the ban is the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law in April, with the support of both Republicans and Democrats in Congress. The law cites national security concerns about the Chinese regime gaining access to the personal data of U.S. TikTok users and abusing them for strategic purposes, as well as spreading propaganda that could pose security threats to the United States.According to Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, the law “addresses the serious threats to national security posed by the Chinese government’s control of TikTok, a platform that harvests sensitive data about tens of millions of Americans and would be a potent tool for covert influence operations by a foreign adversary.
“And the Act mitigates those threats not by imposing any restriction on speech, but instead by prohibiting a foreign adversary from controlling the platform.”
Furthermore, the U.S. Court of Appeals denied TikTok’s argument that the ban violates its users’ First Amendment rights. Thus, TikTok’s response to the law was not surprising.
“The TikTok ban was conceived and pushed through based upon inaccurate, flawed and hypothetical information, resulting in outright censorship of the American people,” the company said in a Dec. 6 statement.
How Will Beijing Retaliate?
If either the TikTok sale or ban comes about, there will be repercussions.Beijing is aware that a U.S. ban on TikTok could have a ripple effect, leading other countries to also ban it. The Chinese saw this occur with Huawei routing hardware during the first Trump administration. Once the United States prohibited the sale of Huawei’s telecommunications equipment over national security concerns, other nations did so as well. That would be a significant blow to the Chinese regime’s global technological leadership and image as a challenger to the United States.
Given recent history, it is not realistic to think that the Chinese regime would allow a major company to be kicked out of the U.S. market without consequences. First, China is already under economic duress and needs more revenue, not less. Second, in the face of another four years of Trump’s “America First” agenda, Beijing is well aware that any appearance of weakness will be exploited externally by the Trump administration and potentially internally by Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s political rivals.
Furthermore, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has several ways in which it could punish the United States for its treatment of TikTok. A few obvious options include denying U.S. companies access to the Chinese market, and the CCP would have many from which to choose. According to Xiaomeng Lu, director of the geo-technology practice at Eurasia Group, “China is keeping options open at the moment” but warned that “some U.S. tech brands could be at risk of becoming the collateral damage of this tit-for-tat cycle.”
That threat is certainly credible. In the past, Beijing has kept U.S. social media firms, such as Meta Platforms Inc. and Snap Inc., out of the Chinese market. Making life difficult for U.S. companies such as Tesla, Apple, or any number of U.S. tech firms could be involved in the offing. That could mean a variety of punishments, such as limiting power to factories, disrupting supply chains within China, or other forms of industrial sabotage. Such actions could be the extent of the CCP’s response or, just as likely, part of a greater, coordinated countereffort.
Linking the US TikTok Ban to US Arms Sales to Taiwan
After the law was passed in April, the Chinese regime linked the TikTok ban with U.S. arms sales to Taiwan as related behavior targeting Chinese sovereignty, economic development, and free market principles. It described the ban as an example of the United States throwing its weight around.In response to the law’s passage, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said: “This package gravely infringes upon China’s sovereignty. It includes large military aid to Taiwan, which seriously violates the one-China principle.”
Will Trump’s Reversal Save TikTok?
Ironically, it may be the incoming Trump administration that actually saves TikTok. Although Trump tried to get TikTok banned during his first administration in 2020, he recently asked the Supreme Court to delay its decision on the matter to see if a political resolution could be arranged.The reasoning behind Trump’s reversal is probably multifaceted. It may be due to the fact that billionaire Jeff Yass, one of the largest donors to his 2024 presidential campaign, owns a 7 percent interest (worth an estimated $21 billion) in ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese-owned parent company, with another 15 percent owned by Yass’s trading company, Susquehanna International Group.
That’s a simple, if not simplistic, analysis, but it may be a factor in his change of mind. Just as likely, if not more so, is that Trump may want to use TikTok’s future in the United States as a bargaining chip in wider trade negotiations with Beijing. Both may be true.
In one last cliffhanger to the TikTok drama, the Supreme Court has agreed to review the case on Jan. 10, just nine days before the forced sale deadline.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
