The administration faces national security concerns over the app’s ownership — and a possible backlash over a ban.
And yet congressional Republicans have consistently sought to cast Biden as weak on China, searching for a wedge issue on which to demonstrate their hawkishness. TikTok has emerged as a potent target, fueled by revelations at the end of last year that some of its employees hadon journalists at BuzzFeed and the Financial Times.
The White House has endorsed legislation from Sens. Mark R. Warner and John Thune that would give Biden the power to ban TikTok, but would not require him to do so. Observers had long assumed that legislation would be used primarily as leverage to force China to divest its U.S. holdings, before the comments by China’s commerce ministry last week appeared to rule that out.
But the proposal is facing political headwinds in the House, where some Republicans are pushing for bills that target TikTok more directly. Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee earlier this month advanced a separate bill that explicitly calls out TikTok and would require the White House to report to Congress whether “reasonable grounds exist” for banning the app — and bar it if so. But Democrats on the panel, accusing Republicans of rushing the proposal and risking U.S.
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