Proposed TikTok ban is an affront to economic and personal freedom

Congress believes it is threatening TikTok and its parent company ByteDance with the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. But in reality, Congress is threatening America’s standing in the world as a safe place for investment and innovation. The bill requires TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell to America or one of our allies. If they refuse to sell or choose to sell to a “foreign adversary,” they will be shut down. Therefore, it’s not a ban, but an ultimatum.

This bill would set a dangerous precedent and chill future investment if enacted. Foreign entrepreneurs would have to wonder if their country of origin could be next on America’s list of adversaries. What do you suppose Iranian or Venezuelan entrepreneurs are thinking as they watch this? Don’t they have reason to be worried about putting their blood, sweat and capital in America? 

Unfortunately, these would-be foreign innovators have good reason to be hesitant. TikTok is just the latest in a string of government interference in consenting economic relationships. The Feds put the kibosh on the JetBlue-Spirit Airlines merger, and both President Biden and former President Trump plan to block Japanese firm Nippon Steel from acquiring U.S. Steel.

Few topics galvanize Congress the way TikTok did last week. When was the last time Congress introduced a bill on a Tuesday, marked it up on Thursday and passed it the following week? TikTok is so deeply popular in America that Congress had no choice but to coordinate this surprise attack. Nearly half of America — 170 million Americans — are active users, including 7 million businesses. That’s a colossal entrenched opposition.

While there are several avenues of attack against TikTok, the primary one is that it comes from China, not Silicon Valley. TikTok’s origin story as a super villain writes itself: A foreign, authoritarian enemy creates an app capable of brainwashing the youth, spying on our leaders, and collecting our precious data. It’s a national security threat, the critics say — an existential threat to U.S. sovereignty, even. 

In fact, TikTok has been working with the U.S. to alleviate privacy and national security concerns since 2019. The result was their $1.5 billion initiative, Project Texas. In short, TikTok created an American-led subsidiary called U.S. Data Security, which is in charge of TikTok in America. All U.S. data is stored on Oracle servers in the U.S. and is under the control of the American-led USDS team.

All U.S. user data goes in and out of Oracle’s servers. Don’t trust Oracle? The Pentagon does. Further, TikTok Inc., which offers the TikTok app in the U.S., is incorporated in California and Delaware, and is subject to U.S. laws and regulations governing privacy and data security.

Could TikTok feed American data to the Chinese Communist Party anyway, regardless of Project Texas? Yes, but it would be unnecessary and foolish. As Paul Matzko of the Cato Institute writes, “[China] would [have to] be willing to risk exposure and the implosion of a $200 billion company just to gain information they could otherwise buy from data brokers for pennies.”

Finally, Congress has to dance around the fact that banning TikTok looks a lot like banning speech. The “largest removal of speech in U.S. history, and by several orders of magnitude,” according to Paul Matzko. Further, the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana held that a law enacted by the Montana legislature “ban[ned] TikTok outright and, in doing so, it limit[ed] constitutionally protected First Amendment speech.” 

In their effort to force ByteDance to sell or leave the U.S., Congress is threatening a cadre of interests: investors, parents, the First Amendment, court precedent and roughly half of America, including millions of businesses. We deserve more options than this sledgehammer fix to address even the concerns that might be or seem legitimate.

Adam Brandon is president of FreedomWorks.