TikTok, China and Trump
On Wednesday, the House passed legislation that, if enacted, would force ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, to sell it to an American company within six months or it will no longer be allowed in the US. The vote was overwhelmingly bipartisan with 352 in favor and only 65 against. Despite a last minute statement against the bill by Trump, just 15 Republicans voted no. Although it seemingly came out of nowhere, the bill is the culmination of a long, bipartisan effort in Congress and the Biden Administration to deal with the problem of TikTok. Biden has said he will sign the bill if it gets to his desk.
When word got out that the bill was going to be voted on in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, where it originated, TikTok sprang into action. It sent a notice to all its users that it was going to be banned and they should contact their member of Congress to tell them to vote no. The effort backfired spectacularly. Many users did call and some left hysterical messages giving away that they were minors. That angered many House members and served as proof for why the bill should pass. It passed the committee unanimously.
The bill now goes to the Senate where its prospects are unclear. It’s not going to pass quickly and it may not pass at all. Chuck Schumer has been noncommittal on it and some senators have expressed concerns about it. I find most of the arguments in favor of and against the bill to be either unpersuasive or not enough to justify supporting or opposing it. I support the bill, but only for one simple reason. I don’t want a hostile foreign government to have a platform here, period. In the interest of full disclosure, I'm not on TikTok and never have been.
Some of the arguments in favor of forcing TikTok to be sold focus on its spreading misinformation and promoting propaganda. It is true that it spreads a lot of misinformation and suppresses things the Chinese government (the CCP) doesn’t like. It is certainly fair to say that TikTok promotes propaganda. It has, for example, helped spread pro-Hamas videos and has likely had a big impact on the views of young people on the Israel-Hamas war. Most significantly, it is very hard to find videos that discuss anything unflattering to the CCP such as Tibet, the Hong Kong protests, Uyghurs and Tiananmen Square.
The problem of misinformation and propaganda is not unique to TikTok. Social media in general is good at spreading and promoting both. By design, social media thrives on clicks and stories that get the most clicks tend to be things that promote outrage either by distorting things or flat out making things up. Getting rid of TikTok isn’t going to solve that problem.
The concerns about user privacy are, I think, overblown. It’s true the CCP probably gains information about Americans from it, but they can do it by other means if they want to such as buying information from companies that have it or collect it. In general, Americans (and others) have been more than willing to give up their privacy. The biggest threat to privacy isn’t the CIA, FBI or NSA. It’s Meta, X, Instagram and TikTok. For those worried about privacy violations, a comprehensive privacy protection law that applies to all social media companies would likely be a better fix than singling out TikTok.
Ultimately, I don’t care if concerns about misinformation, propaganda and privacy are overstated and won’t be solved by forcing the sale of TikTok or getting rid of it altogether. A hostile foreign government shouldn’t be allowed to control or influence a platform with a big audience here. That is what is unique to TikTok. It is still limited in its reach, but it has grown very rapidly in a very short time. A big percentage of young people get their news primarily from it.
I don’t know what kind of harm(s) could ultimately come from it, but I don’t want to find out. I know that’s abstract and vague, but if it ever becomes an obvious problem it will probably be too late. Maybe the CCP doesn’t really care about TikTok and will never use it for anything nefarious, but call me highly skeptical. It certainly is worth noting that the CCP position on TikTok is that it should not be sold.
Maybe they are just taking that position out of pride or anger, but maybe not. If TikTok really doesn’t do anything for the CCP, why do they care about its ownership? Even if it’s hard to find direct evidence of the CCP actively manipulating TikTok, the idea that they exercise no influence or control over it is beyond laughable. The CCP has used private companies to advance their political aims many times. On plenty of occasions, the CCP has required foreign companies to comply with their censorship rules or foreign companies have done so on their own. Examples of that include foreign movies not mentioning anything unflattering about China, airlines not referring to Taiwan as a country and the NBA throwing Daryl Morey under the bus.
I don’t care that ByteDance is technically a private company. In China, the distinction between private companies and the CCP is only as much as the latter allows. That has always been true, but under Xi it has gotten much worse. He has done everything he can to blur the line between himself and the private economy.
Given how much influence TikTok has gained in the US and abroad and how quickly it has grown, it is inconceivable that the CCP is allowing it to have free reign without any interference. The CCP has exerted control over private companies with much less influence. There is no way, no how that they aren’t using TikTok to advance their goals.
To state the obvious, the values of the US and the CCP are worlds apart. The US has democratic elections, a free press and freedom of speech. The CCP is a dictatorship that is hostile towards all of those things. The CCP isn’t content to just crush dissent at home. They want to expand that abroad and TikTok is providing a new front in that effort.
Free speech concerns
The argument that I find most compelling against clamping down on TikTok is it violates freedom of speech. Like all social media platforms, it can provide a way for people to speak out on any subject. Even though much of what is spread is bad, it still is protected speech. I think from a utilitarian standpoint, social media has been bad. It has wrecked the lives of many people, especially teens, and has made Generation Z the most pessimistic generation even though their economic situation is very good.
Social media gives people a warped sense of how the world really is. It promotes isolation and reduces real life interactions. On social media, people can act in awful ways that they never would if they were face-to-face. I think there are things that can be done to help ameliorate all that, but it is mostly about changes in culture, not laws. A blanket ban on social media would likely be a net positive, but it would be flatly unconstitutional and I don’t support it.
I consider myself a hardliner when it comes to defending the right to free speech. It’s the one issue where I would call myself militant and extreme. If free speech conflicts with another goal or value, I will side with it almost every time. While I do consider myself fanatical in defending the right to free speech, I’m not an absolutist.
There are two reasons I don’t find the free speech argument against taking action on TikTok to be strong enough to oppose it. The first is that we’re not dealing with private individuals or organizations, we’re dealing with a foreign company that is under the control of a hostile foreign government. Hostile foreign governments don’t have free speech rights.
I’m certainly not opposed to foreign companies operating in the US. That’s a huge part of our economy and a great benefit to virtually everyone. That even includes companies from China. Unlike some others, I don’t think companies or individuals from China buying land in the US is a problem absent some very clear national security risk.
I don’t necessarily have a problem with a foreign government owning or exerting control over a social media platform. If TikTok was owned by a company from, say, Canada that was under the influence or control of the Canadian government, I doubt I would care. The same goes for any allied, democratic country. China, however, is not an ally or a democratic country.
The best analogy I have heard about why TikTok must be sold or banned is to ask what the reaction would have been if the Soviet government had tried to buy a national broadcast channel in the US during the Cold War? The answer is it never would have been allowed. The FCC would never have approved it. In the off chance that the FCC approved it, Congress would have quickly intervened and passed a law against it. By the same token, a hostile foreign government shouldn’t have control or influence over a major social media platform in the US.
Even if free speech is infringed on by taking action against TikTok, national security is also a concern, which is the second reason why I don’t agree with the free speech argument. It should go without saying that national security is an extremely important consideration. True, invoking it has been used excessively and sometimes abusively, but in this case, I think it certainly is valid.
Here, I think national security triumphs over free speech even if one accepts the free speech argument. It’s not like there is tradeoff between having a social media platform and preventing a hostile foreign government from gaining a foothold here. If TikTok is forced to be sold but opts to be banned, those who currently use it will migrate to another platform. Either it will be an existing platform or one will quickly be created and be widely used. Life will go on for virtually everyone who uses TikTok as if nothing ever happened. The only lasting difference will be that the CCP loses a potential avenue for causing problems here.
For those worried about setting a bad precedent, I think that’s unfounded. The only reason any action is being taken against TikTok is because of its entanglement with a hostile foreign government. No other major platform is subject to the bill passed by the House. In the future, if the bill passes, the president will have the authority to go after social media companies that are controlled by or are under the influence of a hostile foreign government, but only those. Platforms like Instagram, Meta and X will not be affected.
Another concern I have heard is that authoritarian governments could use a crackdown on TikTok as an excuse to crackdown on social media companies in their countries. Next thing you know, the CCP will ban X, YouTube, Instagram and Meta. Oh, wait, that’s right, they do that now. An authoritarian government like the CCP doesn’t need the US as an excuse to crackdown on anything that might promote dissent. They have already done it.
Trump is not tough on China
Towards the end of his presidency, Trump issued an executive order banning TikTok unless it was sold to an American company. In typical Trump fashion, it was sloppily crafted and poorly written and was struck down in court twice. Biden rescinded it because of that, but he still continued an investigation by the Commerce Department into TikTok that started under Trump. Throughout his presidency, Trump railed against China while showering Xi with praise. He imposed tariffs on some Chinese products, but also sought new trade deals. His trying to get a deal on soybeans is probably why he was praising Xi’s efforts at containing a mysterious new virus that emerged in late 2019 even though it was obvious the CCP didn’t have it under control and was lying about it.
In general, the approach taken by Trump towards China was a departure from what his predecessors had pursued. The belief of every president from Reagan to Obama was that more trade with China was good. It would make China more prosperous and would push them in a more democratic direction. With economic freedom and prosperity comes political freedom, the thinking went. It wasn’t a crazy idea at the time and it had broad, bipartisan support, but it turned out to be very wrong.
China has grown immensely since 2000. Trade with the US and other western countries has boomed and living standards there have risen sharply. The CCP, however, has not become more democratic or accountable, just the opposite. Under Xi, the CCP is exerting more control over peoples’ lives than at any time since Mao Zedong. The CCP has taken advantage of economic growth and the huge economic leverage they have gained to not only crush dissent at home, but to also go after it abroad. Rather than China looking more like the west, it is the west that is looking more like China.
The idea that more trade with China is unambiguously good is dead and it should stay that way. Trump moved away from it and Biden has mostly continued on that path. I think treating the CCP as an adversary and understanding that they don’t abide by the rules of free markets and are not going to change is the right way to approach China.
Trump has long been hostile towards free trade. It’s one of the few consistencies about him and is a part of his viewing everything as zero sum. That he happened to be sort of right in the case of China shouldn’t obscure the fact that his overall approach to trade was bad.[i] There is a difference between being wary of unfettered trade with China and being against it in general.
Trump has no beliefs or values that inherently put him in opposition to the CCP. On top of that, he’s completely corrupt. The combination of believing in very little and being corrupt effectively means his policy on China (and probably everything else) is for sale. That was on display this week.
It caught many by surprise when he came out against the TikTok bill because it was a 180 from where he previously stood. In fact, there is a very simple explanation for it. A major investor in ByteDance is Jeff Yass. He’s also a big donor to Republicans and the Club for Growth, a right-wing advocacy group that has fought with Trump before. Earlier this month, Trump said his feud with the group had ended and showered them and Yass with praise.
Yass stands to lose billions if TikTok shuts down in the US. I’m sure he will be giving plenty of money to Trump soon if he hasn’t already. Trump needs the money badly. His campaign doesn’t have much of it now and he personally is on the hook for potentially hundreds of millions of dollars. Between his need for money and having very few convictions, he’s easy to bribe and is a big national security risk because of it.
TikTok is a fairly easy issue when it comes to China. The much tougher issues are things like Taiwan. If he will fold so easily on something like TikTok, there is no reason to think he won’t fold on everything else. It doesn’t help either that he admires authoritarian strongmen and Xi is one of the most successful of them.
Trump’s worldview, if you can even call it that, is purely transactional. That’s why he talks about NATO like it’s a protection racket and demands its members “pay their bills.” The concepts of shared values and ideals are completely foreign to him.
Treating everything as transactional can sometimes, coincidentally, lead to good things. The Abraham Accords are very good, for example. Overall, though, it’s a horrible approach. It’s shortsighted, devoid of any considerations beyond quid pro quos and can easily be taken advantage of, i.e., bribery.
Just in case someone reading this is wondering what’s a good example of Trump’s corruption in foreign policy, remember what he did to Ukraine in 2019? He tried to extort Ukraine to dig up dirt on Biden by holding up aid Congress had authorized. That’s something no other president had done before, but it came naturally to him because he thinks countries like Ukraine exist to provide services for him in return for getting aid or anything else. Attempting to extort Ukraine is what got him impeached the first time.
The CCP has deep pockets, much deeper than any billionaire in the US. If they are convinced that bribing Trump is the way to get what they want with respect to the US, they will do it. All it took was a donation from one billionaire to get him to flip flop on TikTok. It probably will take a lot more to get him to abandon Taiwan, but they can afford it.
[i] Biden’s approach to trade is better than Trump’s, but is not great. Buy American requirements are great politics, but bad policy. Protectionist laws like the Jones Act are bad and should be repealed, but have support from both parties. The effort to prevent US Steel from being acquired by a Japanese company is bad, but I’m sure it polls very well. With an economy at full employment, US policy needs to be focused on efficiency and that means making it easier to build things and to provide more goods and services.