President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have voiced differing opinions on legislation that would remove the social media application TikTok from app stores over concerns about Chinese interference.
The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party released a 13-page bill that calls for the removal of TikTok from app stores by September 30. The only way the application would be allowed to remain in stores is if ByteDance, the Chinese-based company that owns TikTok, sells its shares of the application, per The New York Times.
After receiving unanimous approval by the House Energy and Commerce Committee last week, the bill, known as HR 7521, is headed for a vote on the House floor. Committee chair Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) said that “the Chinese Communist Party can weaponize platforms like TikTok to manipulate the American people.”
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) said he was preparing to speed up the voting process for the bill using a procedure meant for legislation that is agreed upon by all parties.
“We must ensure the Chinese government cannot weaponize TikTok against American users and our government through data collection and propaganda,” he explained, per The New York Times.
The bill has also received approval from the president, with Biden telling reporters at Joint Base Andrews, “If they pass it, I’ll sign it,” per The Washington Post.
Despite receiving support from many within the federal government, the former president has presented concerns about removing the application from stores.
Trump discussed the platform on CNBC’s Squawk Box Monday morning, claiming that the app’s removal would benefit Meta’s Facebook, which he called “an enemy of the people.”
“If China wants anything from [TikTok], they will give it, so that’s a national security risk [that] goes up,” acknowledged the former president, per CNBC.
“But when I look at it, I’m not looking to make Facebook double the size. And if you ban TikTok, Facebook and others — but mostly Facebook — will be a big beneficiary, and I think Facebook has been very busy.”
Trump added that “there’s a lot of good and there’s a lot of bad” that comes with the application, noting that the younger generation will “go crazy without it,” per CNBC.
While it is still unclear whether the bill to ban the social media application will pass through both chambers of Congress, a statement from TikTok claims that the legislation has a “predetermined outcome: a total ban of TikTok in the United States.”
“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,” the company claimed in the statement, per Reuters.