TikTok has restarted its efforts to negotiate with the government on whether it will be allowed to continue operations in the United States or be banned over its connections to China.
Teams from TikTok parent company ByteDance and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States met at the Treasury Department to restart negotiations last week, according to the Washington Post. There’s little evidence that CFIUS, an oversight agency regulating how foreign companies operate within the U.S., has changed its stance. The government previously said the company had two options: wait for Congress to pass legislation or sell its shares in TikTok and remove its connections to China.
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TikTok had been implementing “Project Texas,” a $1.5 billion effort to store all U.S. data in the Oracle data center, which would allow it to say that Americans’ data is protected from Chinese access. However, ByteDance later revealed that the data of some U.S. users had been accessed in China for business purposes.
TikTok would also agree to a national security agreement that would give the U.S. government extensive oversight of the app’s business affairs, based on a draft of the plans TikTok released. This includes CFIUS appointing a three-person board to oversee and review all U.S.-based operations.
National security experts have raised the fear that the Chinese Communist Party could use national security laws to acquire ByteDance’s data on the U.S. for its surveillance purposes.
While members of Congress have introduced several bills restricting TikTok to varying degrees, none of them have gained enough traction to reach the Senate or House floor for a vote.
Sens. John Thune (R-SD) and Mark Warner (D-VA) introduced the RESTRICT Act, which would give the Commerce Department additional powers to regulate tech business deals related to nations of concern, such as China or Iran. Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) have proposed outright bans on TikTok. Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) introduced legislation forcing apps such as TikTok to show users their country of origin.
TikTok has been a target of scrutiny for Republicans.
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Yet former tech executive and 2024 presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy created a TikTok account after meeting YouTube star Jake Paul. “The fact is that many young voters are [using it] & we’re not going to change this country without winning,” Ramaswamy posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
ByteDance, the White House, CFIUS, and the Treasury Department did not respond to requests for comment.
