Trade warriors are scrambling to avoid the consequences of their actions. The top U.S. court upheld a bipartisan law to ban TikTok in just two days’ time. Yet neither outgoing President Joe Biden nor incoming President-elect Donald Trump want the social media app to go dark on their watch. It’s familiar behavior from Uncle Sam: catching threats too late and creating a mess trying to clean them up.
In a Friday ruling, the Supreme Court knocked back a challenge to legislation forcing China-based parent ByteDance to sell the U.S. business of TikTok or be blocked. How that plays out is murky. Biden officials say that users won’t suddenly lose access
, opens new tab. The White House is leaving it to the next occupant; the new administration could similarly forestall the pressure.
Trump seems eager to avoid the inevitable result of years of promised crackdowns, including his 2020 executive order declaring the app a security threat. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew will attend his inauguration
, opens new tab on Monday, the New York Times reported. Guests include Elon Musk, owner of social media rival X and mooted candidate to acquire TikTok.
The duplicity speaks to a simple reality: 170 million Americans use the short-form video app, and no politician wants to be responsible for taking it away. Both Biden and Trump know this full well. Despite their pronouncements on the danger of Beijing exploiting it to gather data, both candidates used TikTok as a platform in the election.
Thing is, there was an opportunity to stop TikTok in its infancy. The app traces back to ByteDance’s $1 billion acquisition, opens new tab in 2017 of forerunner Musical.ly, which had only 60 million western users. Back then, it was mainly frequented by lip-syncing tweens, hardly the formidable rival of Instagram or YouTube it is today.
But the U.S. government is lousy at identifying incipient dangers. Washington didn’t blink when Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion in 2012. Now regulators want to break up $1.5 trillion parent Meta Platforms (META.O), opens new tab. Or look at Biden’s attempt to thwart Japan’s Nippon Steel (5401.T), opens new tab from buying U.S. Steel (X.N), opens new tab over national security concerns. Never mind that the acquirer hails from an allied nation and that the American steel industry peaked over 50 years ago.
The same goes for the broader anxiety over China’s economic prowess that helped fuel Trump’s rise. Bipartisan tariffs are a retroactive band-aid on a trend turbo-charged by the entry of the People’s Republic to the World Trade Organization in 2001. TikTok is the latest reminder that Washington leaders are ill-prepared for whatever the next threat will be.
From: Reuters
