The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a bill on Wednesday that would force TikTok to divest from its Chinese owner or get banned from the United States.
The lawmakers voted 352 in favor of the proposed law and 65 against, in a rare moment of bipartisan unity in politically divided Washington. The legislation threatens to be a major setback for the video-sharing app, which has surged in popularity across the world while causing nervousness about its Chinese ownership and its potential subservience to the Communist Party in Beijing.
The fate of the bill is uncertain in the Senate, where some key figures are apprehensive of making such a drastic move against an app that has 170 million US users. President Joe Biden will sign the bill, known officially as the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act,” into law if it came to his desk, the White House has said.
The measure, which only gained momentum in the past few days, requires TikTok’s parent company ByteDance to sell the app within 180 days or see it barred from the Apple and Google app stores in the United States.
It also gives the president power to designate other applications to be a national security threat if under the control of a country considered adversarial to the US.
The resurgent campaign by Washington against TikTok came as a surprise to the company, the Wall Street Journal reported, with TikTok executives reassured when Biden joined the app last month as part of his campaign for a second term.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is in Washington, trying to shore up support to stop the bill.
“This latest legislation being rushed through at unprecedented speed without even the benefit of a public hearing, poses serious Constitutional concerns,” wrote Michael Beckerman, TikTok’s vice president for public policy.
