TikTok business remains mired in negotiations two and a half years later.

Meanwhile, a move by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a powerful body that scrutinizes foreign investments for national security risks, to force Bytedance to divest its U.S.

In that instance, the executive order relied on by Trump had a major hurdle: it derived its power from the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which carves out the import or export of 'informational materials,' and 'personal communication' through the Berman amendment, which sought to protect speech. government for years, since powerful Republican Senator Marco Rubio called for its review in 2019.Ĭourts struck down former President Donald Trump's bid to block TikTok in 2020 with an executive order that granted the Commerce Department similar authorities as the RESTRICT act. TikTok, which FBI director Christopher Wray said in November could be used to 'control software on millions of devices,' has been in the crosshairs of the U.S. TikTok chief executive officer, Shou Zi Chew, will testify Thursday before the House Energy and Commerce Committee and face tough questions from those lawmakers who want to ban the app. TikTok previously criticized the RESTRICT act, saying 'the Biden Administration does not need additional authority from Congress to address national security concerns about TikTok: it can approve the deal negotiated with (the Biden administration) over two years that it has spent the last six months reviewing.' 'It’s a much stronger, cleaner legal authority.' 'RESTRICT is really helpful because it gives this completely new, from scratch, legal authority that doesn’t have any of those complications' under other laws, said Emily Kilcrease, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and former deputy assistant U.S. That would circumvent the speech protections embedded in existing law, lawyers and China watchers said. That means any move to block the app likely depends on passage of legislation like the RESTRICT ACT, a bipartisan bill introduced by Senators this month granting the Commerce Department new power to ban foreign technology that poses a national security risk. Pressure is mounting from lawmakers and national security hawks to ban TikTok, which is owned by China's ByteDance, over fears the app could censure content, influence users, and pass Americans' personal data to Beijing, allegations the company denies.Ĭourts blocked a prior bid by the Trump administration to ban the app in part on the grounds that such a move violated free speech protections. WASHINGTON, March 22 (Reuters) - The Biden administration is under pressure to ban popular Chinese-owned social media app TikTok, but any such move likely hinges on passage of a new law that bolsters the government's authority to regulate speech, experts said.

Bidens speech