Geopolitical Economy Report
The US government has for years threatened to ban TikTok, one of the most popular social media apps in the country.
It’s now looking like this might actually happen.
This March, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to pass legislation called the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act”.
This bill states that it “prohibits distributing, maintaining, or providing internet hosting services for a foreign adversary controlled application (e.g., TikTok)”.
It passed with an overwhelming majority with 352 votes in favor and just 65 votes against. It is now going to go through the Senate, where it is likely going to pass. And President Joe Biden has said he will sign the bill.
TikTok is not technically a Chinese company. It is based in Los Angeles, California, and also Singapore. The CEO of TikTok, Shou Zi Chew, is not Chinese; he is Singaporean.
Shou pointed this out many times when he was grilled in the US Senate by Republicans like Tom Cotton, who tried to portray him as an agent of the Communist Party of China.
What the US government is trying to do with this legislation is force the owner of TikTok, the Chinese company ByteDance, to divest: to sell TikTok, more specially to a US company.
If ByteDance refuses to do so, the US government is going to ban TikTok.
This is part of a technological war that Washington is waging against Beijing.
The US is essentially trying to ban all competition from Chinese tech companies, in order to protect Big Tech monopolies in Silicon Valley.
“Banning TikTok would boost Alphabet, Meta and Snap”, Forbes chirped excitedly in 2023. It noted that these “American technology giants could tack on some $431 billion in market value if the U.S. bans TikTok”.
For its part, Meta (which has tens of billions of dollars of contracts with multiple US government agencies) has spent years lobbying against TikTok.
The Washington Post reported in 2020, “Facebook parent company Meta is paying one of the biggest Republican consulting firms in the country to orchestrate a nationwide campaign seeking to turn the public against TikTok”.
To try to sabotage Chinese competition, the US is banning apps, imposing tariffs, and restricting exports – targeting Chinese electric vehicles, Chinese solar panels, advanced semiconductors, 5G, and smart phones, principally from cutting-edge companies like Huawei.
Washington’s goal is to prevent China from technologically developing. And TikTok is only one part of this larger technological war.
US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo made this clear as day back in 2021, stating, “If we really want to slow down China’s rate of innovation, we need to work with Europe”.
The US commerce secretary has since repeated comments like this multiple times.
This March, Raimondo said that the US will “do whatever it takes” to prevent China from getting access to the most advanced technology.
It’s not a coincidence that, also in March, President Biden called for an investigation into the so-called “national security risks” posed by Chinese electric vehicles.
The Biden White House published an official statement claiming, “Chinese automakers are seeking to flood the autos market in the United States and globally, posing new threats to our national security”.
Biden made this statement just a few weeks after the billionaire oligarch Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, publicly called for trade barriers, to weaken Chinese competitors to his company (which has received billions of dollars of subsidies from the US government).
“If there are no trade barriers established, [Chinese electric vehicles] will pretty much demolish most other car companies in the world”, Musk stated in January. He added that “they’re extremely good”.
The European Union is doing exactly the same thing. The European Commission announced an official investigation into Chinese electric vehicles.
This March, the EU revealed that it is likely going to put retroactive tariffs on Chinese EVs. This came just a few weeks after Musk called for trade barriers.
This is the root of the issue with TikTok. The West is waging a technological war on China.
Washington’s explicitly stated goal is to prevent China from catching up technologically, from advancing and from competing with US corporate monopolies.
This is an attempt to protect US Big Tech monopolies so they can continue to dominate the entire world, so there are no alternatives to US corporate domination.
