Trump Should Make TikTok American

National Review Online

Wednesday, December 18, 2024

 

TikTok is staring down the barrel of a gun. Federal courts have rejected its pleas for an injunction to block the law that would force ByteDance, its Chinese parent, to sell the app to a U.S. owner if it is to continue operating here. TikTok’s leaders are appealing to the Supreme Court and directly to Donald Trump, who met CEO Shou Chew Monday at Mar-a-Lago before the law takes effect on January 19.

 

Trump has said he wants to save the app. The way for him to do that — the only defensible way — is to facilitate a sale to one of multiple potential buyers, including Steve Mnuchin and Activision’s Bobby Kotick.

 

A forced divestiture is the outcome that’s most consistent with Trump’s stated ambitions on China policy, and with both his first-term stance against TikTok’s Chinese ownership and his campaign-trail pledges this year.

 

Trump’s administration has no good reason to give Xi Jinping an early concession by allowing an extension of the Chinese government to operate, unfettered, in America, as Chew wants him to do. Chew’s allegiances are clearly with Beijing; considering that he runs the international subsidiary of a Chinese tech giant, they must be unless he intends to go the way of Jack Ma. This is why Chew assiduously refused to say a negative word about the Party’s atrocities against Uyghurs during two congressional hearings.

 

The allegiance of Chew, a former ByteDance CFO, is reflected in the company’s activities and the fact that among its top ranks are internal enforcers affiliated with the CCP’s political-influence organizations. ByteDance has also signed agreements with China’s government to spread propaganda about the CCP’s genocide of Uyghurs and to set up an artificial intelligence research institute.

 

TikTok is a tool of the Chinese state, and the U.S. should recognize it as such. China’s leaders have long mistreated American companies and blocked U.S. social media networks — including Truth Social — from operating in their country. They have stolen American technology from firms that opened up shop in China and mandated that they set up internal CCP committees.

 

Wresting TikTok from Beijing’s control would send Xi Jinping a signal about America’s resolve to counter China’s long-running history of outrageous behavior. It would be a small but prominent step toward reciprocity. It would honor the broad bipartisan consensus that produced the divestiture law. And it would place Trump in a position of strength as he begins the most consequential set of negotiations of his career.