One of the leading congressional critics of China has introduced legislation that would give the president additional power to crack down on TikTok and other apps owned by foreign adversaries.
House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mike Gallagher (R-WI) introduced the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications on Tuesday. The bill would make it unlawful for app stores to host social media applications owned by companies connected to “foreign adversaries” such as China, Russia, or Iran, specifically focusing on TikTok and its parent company ByteDance. It would also give the president the power to designate other social media apps as being controlled by foreign adversaries and force divestments.
The bill will “address the immediate national security risks posed by TikTok,” staffers told reporters at a briefing, and offer the president tools for addressing similar situations in the future.
The bill has at least 18 co-sponsors, aides told reporters, with members from both sides of the aisle.
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) announced an hour after the bill’s introduction that there would be a hearing and a markup of the bill.
The legislation will focus specifically on the national security concerns raised by apps like TikTok, an approach meant to mitigate any objections others may have about the legislation infringing on First Amendment protections. The ownership will be determined by whether or not the app and its owner’s main corporate headquarters are based in a foreign adversary.
This approach will reportedly allow it to resolve conflicts with the Berman Amendment, an exception in the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. This amendment bars the president from restricting most “information or informational materials, including but not limited to, publications, films, posters, phonograph records, photographs … artworks, and news wire feeds.”
The law would only apply to social media apps and not other foreign companies, such as the China-owned vendor Temu.
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Gallagher’s legislation is the latest bill Congress introduced to address TikTok. Some bills would ban TikTok from the United States. One major bipartisan bill, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) and John Thune’s (R-SD) RESTRICT Act, would give federal agencies the power to “identify, deter, disrupt, prevent, prohibit, investigate, or otherwise mitigate” any transactions made with companies based in “foreign nations of concern.”
