Trump claims concern over possible TikTok ban, years after he tried to ban it himself

Donald Trump’s administration once sought to ban TikTok. Now the former U.S. leader is claiming to have concerns about efforts by U.S. lawmakers to do the same.

Members of the U.S. House of Representatives are expected to soon get the chance to vote on proposed legislation that would force the Chinese-owned ByteDance to divest TikTok.

If that doesn’t happen within six months, TikTok would effectively be banned by way of barring app stores from legally offering it to users, or companies from providing web-hosting services to ByteDance products.

U.S. President Joe Biden said Friday that he’ll sign the legislation if the U.S. Congress passes it. The bill has the support of powerful Republicans including House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Leader Steve Scalise. Former U.S. vice-president Mike Pence also supports the bill.

Yet Trump, the likely Republican presidential nominee this fall, said on social media late Thursday that “if you get rid of TikTok, Facebook … will double their business,” a seemingly less adversarial stance than when his administration tried to ban the same platform.

His campaign did not immediately comment on whether Trump has a position on the legislation. Facebook’s parent company, Meta, declined to comment.

TikTok did not immediately respond Friday to a request for comment from CBC News.

In 2020, Trump sought to ban TikTok and Chinese-owned WeChat but was blocked by the courts.

Trump said in an August 2020 executive order that TikTok data collection “threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information — potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.”

TikTok, which says it has not and would not share U.S. user data with the Chinese government, argues the proposed House bill amounts to a ban. It’s unclear if China would approve any sale, or if TikTok could be divested in six months.

“This legislation has a predetermined outcome: a total ban of TikTok in the United States,” the company said after a congressional committee unanimously supported a vote Thursday to crack down on the platform. “The government is attempting to strip 170 million Americans of their Constitutional right to free expression.”

The app is popular, and getting legislation approved by both the House and Senate in an election year may be difficult.

‘A political question’

Tensions over TikTok have been bubbling in the U.S. for some time, with the platform facing greater scrutiny during Biden’s own presidency, following the pressure it had already faced during Trump’s time in office.

And they have extended to this side of the border, with a group of Canadian privacy regulators launching a probe last year into TikTok’s use and collection of personal information and its compliance with related legislation.

A spokesperson for the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada said Friday that the investigation remains “a high priority” and that the aim is to release its results “within the coming months.”

In 2023, Canada’s federal government banned TikTok from its mobile devices. Similar measures were taken by provinces, territories and even some cities.

Philip Mai, co-director of the Social Media Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University, said any decision to proceed with a ban on TikTok would be inherently political. He sees security concerns about the platform being more rooted in how it could affect users as opposed to how it is directly known to.

“Whether we ban TikTok or not, at the end of the day, is a political question,” Mai said Friday.

Mai said Trump’s recent comments came only days after the former U.S. president glowingly referred to Jeff Yass — a powerful political donor and TikTok investor — at a political function.

“The former president has a track record of being very transactional,” said Mai.

Matthew Lebo, a political science professor at Western University, saw a reminder of another trend in Trump’s way of operating in the political arena.

“His drastic, rapid changes in policy stances are not new or so surprising anymore,” he said Friday.

Lebo said the TikTok issue is not one that is necessarily high up on the list of what motivates voters to turn up on election day, and as such, Trump may have some latitude to change course in this manner.

“He’s not going to lose votes, he’s just going to tell voters what to think about [the issue].”

The 77-year-old Trump and 81-year-old Biden appear headed to a rematch at the polls this November.

Last month, Biden’s re-election campaign joined TikTok. Trump’s own campaign has not.

Lebo said both candidates’ campaigns will be looking for ways to reach younger voters as the election gets closer.

Television ads won’t be helpful to reach those voters, he said, noting that even platforms like Facebook and Twitter aren’t so young anymore.

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