TikTok, the hit social media app, hasn’t had enough political clout to get its way in Congress. But it could become a surprise electoral liability for President Joe Biden, something his likely opponent, Donald Trump, is already trying to exploit.
TikTok is suddenly imperiled in the United States following surprisingly swift legislative action meant to protect American users from possible abuse by Chinese authorities. TikTok’s owner is Chinese company ByteDance, which, in theory, could provide user data on 170 million Americans to China’s communist government or let Chinese authorities spread propaganda to its American audience. There’s no evidence this has happened yet, but American policymakers increasingly view China and its hard-line leader, Xi Jinping, with deep suspicion.
To address those concerns, Congress passed a bipartisan bill that would ban TikTok in the United States within a maximum of 12 months if its Chinese owner doesn’t sell to a non-Chinese buyer. Biden promptly signed it, starting the clock on the 12-month countdown.
TikTok will almost certainly sue to overturn such a law, and it could win: Some experts think the legislation could be a form of censorship that violates the First Amendment. But the risk to TikTok is real, nonetheless. “Our base-case is that China will not allow divestment and TikTok will no longer operate in the US in 2025,” analysts at investing firm Raymond James wrote on April 21.
A looming TikTok ban could turn out to be an underappreciated wild card in this year’s presidential election. The race is tight, with Biden and Trump running within a couple of polling points of each other in the six or seven swing states likely to decide the election. It’s completely plausible that small variations in voter loyalties, compared with the 2020 presidential race in which Biden beat Trump, could produce a different outcome in 2024.
TikTok’s snappy videos appeal mostly to younger Americans, with about 43% of the network’s American users being between 20 and 40. (Another 25% are between 10 and 19, mostly below voting age.)
Biden won 58% of millennial and Gen Z voters in 2020, or those roughly between 18 and 40. Trump got about 39% of them. Biden wooed younger Americans with a vow to fight climate change and an offer of student debt relief.
On climate, Biden has delivered, largely through the 2022 legislation that amounted to the biggest set of green energy incentives in US history. The Supreme Court shot down Biden’s first big student debt relief effort, but he responded with a variety of smaller plans that basically put cash in the pockets of some 30 million Americans.
Biden clearly knows he needs those same young voters in 2024. His campaign launched its own TikTok account for the first time this year, with videos featuring Bernie Sanders touting Biden, Kennedy family members endorsing the president (rather than their kin, RFK, Jr.), and Biden ordering snacks at a Pennsylvania Wawa, the trendy convenience chain.
Yet Biden seems to be struggling with younger voters in 2024. Some polls show Biden slightly behind Trump among the younger cohort Biden won decisively in 2020. Polls have become notoriously iffy, yet it’s no secret many voters think the 81-year-old Biden is too old. And Biden doesn’t just need young people to choose him over Trump — he also needs them to show up in the first place, at least in the numbers they did in 2020.
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TikTok will still be operating as usual on Election Day. But it’s a safe bet a lot of TikTok users will know much more about the risk of a ban now that Biden has signed it into law. Parent ByteDance has adopted a feisty attitude toward the legislation, vowing litigation. It has already urged its American users to protest the potential ban and is likely to rile them up further.
There’s no obvious exit strategy. What Washington really wants is divestiture, not a ban, but the Chinese government would have to approve a sale — and it doesn’t want ByteDance’s technology in American hands, just as the United States doesn’t want Americans’ user data on Chinese servers. Litigation could persist well beyond the 12-month deadline, and even if TikTok wins, the law might force the United States to ban the platform until litigation concludes.
Trump tried to ban TikTok himself when he was president, though he backed off the idea in 2020 after some backlash. Trump now says he opposes a TikTok ban, making Biden the bad cop on the issue.
On April 22, Trump posted on his own social network, Truth Social, "Just so everyone knows, especially the young people, Crooked Joe Biden is responsible for banning TikTok." That was before Biden ever signed a bill that 197 of the 212 Republicans in the House voted for. What the young people really need to know is that there's bipartisan support in Congress — mostly run by olds — to get TikTok to dump its Chinese ownership.
Since Biden signed the bill, however, responsibility will rest with him. Polling by the Pew Research Center shows the share of Americans who support banning TikTok dropped from 50% a year ago to 38% at the end of 2023. It’s possible that fewer people like the idea the more real it seems or the more they hear about it. If so, support for a ban could erode further as the millions of creators who use it to promote a business start to kvetch.
Of TikTok’s 170 million US users, only about 25%, or 43 million, are active posters, according to Pew. The rest are passive users who might not mind switching to competitors, such as Reels or Instagram, if TikTok disappears. But alienating several million people in the home stretch of a tight election still seems risky.
Biden now has one additional campaign duty on his agenda: Preventing TikTokkers from turning against him. He could post videos telling his fellow TikTokkers he’s just trying to protect them from Chinese data pirates or make sure any election propaganda they see is legitimate. Or stress that he just wants an American company to own the secrets of every TikTok user. It will be a fascinating test of how those videos actually connect with the people who watch them.
Rick Newman is a senior columnist for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter at @rickjnewman.
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