China warned Wednesday that a potential TikTok ban would “come back to bite the United States.”
The House is expected to vote Wednesday morning on a bill that would force TikTok’s China-based parent company ByteDance to divest the video-based social media app or face a ban in the U.S.
“Although the United States has never found evidence that TikTok threatens US national security, it has not stopped suppressing TikTok,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said, according to Agence France-Presse.
“This kind of bullying behaviour that cannot win in fair competition disrupts companies’ normal business activity, damages the confidence of international investors in the investment environment, and damages the normal international economic and trade order,” he added.
“In the end, this will inevitably come back to bite the United States itself,” Wang continued.
House Republicans remained hopeful Tuesday that the legislation would pass the lower chamber, even as former President Trump voiced his opposition to a potential TikTok ban.
The former president, who officially locked up the GOP nomination Tuesday night, suggested that a TikTok ban would empower Facebook.
“Frankly, there are a lot of people on TikTok that love it. There are a lot of young kids on TikTok who will go crazy without it. There are a lot of users,” Trump said Monday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
“There’s a lot of good and a lot of bad with TikTok. But the thing I don’t like is, without TikTok you can make Facebook bigger. And I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people, along with the media,” he added.
Facebook banned Trump in January 2021 in the wake of the Capitol riots, during which hundreds of his supporters attempted to stop the certification of the 2020 election results. He had spent months spreading false claims about the election on social media in the lead-up to the riots. His account was reinstated last year.
Trump’s current position on TikTok represents a significant shift from when he was in office. In 2020, he vowed to ban the app from operating in the U.S. and issued an order calling on ByteDance to divest from TikTok’s U.S. operations. However, the order was later blocked in court.
The former president’s comments came after he confirmed he recently met with Jeff Yass, a major GOP donor and investor in TikTok, although Trump said Yass did not bring up TikTok during the conversation.