House panel to vote on President Biden’s proposed nationwide ban on TikTok

The House Foreign Affairs Committee is looking to debate a bill that would allow President Biden to issue a nationwide TikTok ban. Yahoo! Finance's tech editor, Dan Halley, is here with the details. Dan, let's start with this legislation that is being considered. What's in it? What would it mean? Yeah, so essentially what this means is it's legislation where the government would be able to block companies from transferring data of Americans to other companies that are controlled by China. So TikTok, right? That's essentially this idea here. The Biden administration has been working with TikTok and TikTok's been working with Oracle to ensure that U.S.

consumer data is stored in the U.S. But that's still in the process going through. In the meantime, there's still this overwhelming sense of majority really in Congress who just outright ban TikTok. There's the fears of collecting data on Americans. There's the fear of propaganda spreading from China. And there's the fear of the potential for information to be used against Americans in places of power.

Those are really the big concerns that we're seeing. So now this bill would potentially go and jump over every kind of effort we've seen so far to actually ban TikTok. And it could theoretically work, although it would be coming from the House, which is controlled by Republicans. The Senate, which is controlled by Democrats, might not necessarily agree with that. And then ultimately it has to go to President Biden's desk to be signed. I think we've seen efforts like this in the past. This is a unique take.

But I don't necessarily think that TikTok is going to go away anytime soon. Dan, is there any indication about its likelihood of getting through the Senate? Any Democratic senators that have stepped down in favor of banning TikTok? Yeah. I mean, look, this is something that Democrats and Republicans want to happen. They don't like TikTok. And on the whole, they agree as to why. It's because of the potential for propaganda, because of the potential for American user data to be misused. And that's really the fear here.

Look, there was prior, under President Trump, there were efforts to have TikTok, or ByteDance, TikTok's parent company divest itself of TikTok. There was talk about Walmart buying it at some point. I don't know if you guys remember that. But that was up for a potential outcome at some point. And so now we're at this point where there's the continued harping on this issue. And I think both sides truly do want to do away with the app. They've already banded on government devices.

Well, that's great, because if you're in the government and you have a personal device, you can still use it. So if they do want to do away with it, this is just one of the ways that they can go about it. It just matters if TikTok's not going to roll over and say, OK, we're gone, guys. We're going to leave one of our most lucrative markets. They're going to fight it tooth and nail on the courts. And then it's up for them to decide. It's unlikely from what I've seen so far, not a legal expert by any means.

But I would say that it's unlikely that we would see TikTok banned at really any point in the near future or down the line. Certainly a lot of people are hoping that that is the case. And a lot of the users that love using the app. Dan Halle, great to have you. Thanks so much.

Yahoo Finance, Personal Finance, Money, Investing, Business, Savings, Investment, Stocks, Bonds, FX, Currencies, NYSE, Equities, News, Politics, Market, Markets, Yahoo FInance Premium, Stock market, President Biden, TikTok