Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo’s visit to China puts a spotlight on TikTok’s future in the United States, where criticism of the app and its ties to Beijing has reached a fever pitch this year.
Despite intense pressure on the popular short-form video app, which is owned by Chinese technology company ByteDance, efforts to ban or regulate it in Washington have yet to bear fruit. And even with all that scrutiny, Ms. Raimondo to discuss TikTok while in China, a glaring omission that reflects the impasse with which it left the Biden administration.
The administration has been tight-lipped on how to deal with TikTok even as intelligence officials warn it poses a national security threat. The app has been banned from government devices federally and in more than two dozen states, its chief executive was grilled before Congress in March and lawmakers have proposed legislation that would make it easier for the White House to ban tech companies owned by “foreign adversaries” like China.
But the White House’s options are limited. Mrs. Raimondo memorably said Bloomberg News this year that if the administration banned TikTok, “the politician in me thinks we’d lose literally every voter under 35, forever.” (TikTok claims 150 million users in the United States.)
It is also unclear whether there is a court ban. In March, when the Biden administration was reportedly considering forcing the sale of TikTok by its Chinese owners, China’s Ministry of Commerce quickly said it opposed a divestment and that the move would discourage foreign investment. in the United States.
It was left to the United States and TikTok to come up with a plan for operating in America that addresses national security concerns, but those talks have stalled amid growing tensions between the two superpowers.
What kind of approval is TikTok waiting for?
TikTok has been in confidential talks for years with the administration’s review panel, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, to address questions about TikTok and ByteDance’s relationship with the Chinese government and their handling of user data. The visit of Ms. Raimondo marked a year since TikTok submitted a 90-page proposal detailing how it would offer independent oversight of its platform, but the plan has yet to be approved.
TikTok, which says it has never shared US user data with the Chinese government, has revealed some details of its plan, known as Project Texas. It would put US user data on domestic servers owned and operated by Oracle, the software giant, and give the American government and Oracle exclusive control over the app. Forbes recently reviewed the proposal is confidential and TikTok US reportedly plans to exclude ByteDance executives from some “security-related decision-making” and instead rely on a committee “that will work in secret from ByteDance.”
Jodi Seth, a TikTok spokeswoman, said discussions with CFIUS are “ongoing.” A spokesman for the Treasury Department, which oversees CFIUS, declined to comment.
What worries the United States?
Intelligence officials have said Beijing could use TikTok to gain access to sensitive American data or manipulate its powerful algorithms to influence the content they see. They pointed to laws that allow the Chinese government to secretly solicit data from Chinese companies and citizens for intelligence-gathering operations. TikTok has set up headquarters in Singapore and Los Angeles, though that hasn’t stopped concerns.
The White House needs to tread carefully. Anupam Chander, a fellow at the Institute for Rebooting Social Media at Harvard University, said targeting TikTok risks provoking a blowback against American companies operating in China, such as Apple.
“Banning TikTok will spawn other bans and start a digital trade war that will hurt companies and users on both sides,” he said.
Mr. Chander also said that while TikTok has attracted critics from both sides of the aisle, Democrats are more likely to benefit from the platform than Republicans ahead of the next election. He noted that the current administration has teamed up with TikTok stars to promote vaccines and said Republicans “don’t use it as enthusiastically as Democrats.”
What holdup?
Federal judges ruled against President Donald J. Trump’s attempt to ban TikTok in 2020. The Biden administration tried to navigate the issue in a way that would avoid a similar fate.
In March, the White House endorsed legislation authored by Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, that would give the administration more power to regulate foreign services that collect information on Americans.
But that bill, the RESTRICT Act, has not moved through Congress. There are also several other laws that would give the administration the power to ban TikTok, potentially giving it more leverage in negotiations with the app. In a statement last week, Mr. Warner said the country needed a “real approach” to address apps that raised national security concerns.
“Today, we’re talking about TikTok,” he said. “But new apps and tools keep coming out.”