The U.S. House Energy and Commerce committee on Thursday unanimously approved legislation giving China’s ByteDance six months to divest from short video app TikTok or face a U.S. ban.
The 50-0 vote represents the most significant momentum for a U.S. crackdown on TikTok, which has about 170 million U.S. users, which had stalled over the last year amid heavy lobbying by the company.
Lawmakers hope to move quickly on the measure and said the U.S. House of Representatives could take up the bill in the coming weeks.
“This legislation has a predetermined outcome: a total ban of TikTok in the United States,” the company said after the vote. “The government is attempting to strip 170 million Americans of their Constitutional right to free expression. This will damage millions of businesses, deny artists an audience, and destroy the livelihoods of countless creators across the country.” Before the vote, lawmakers got a closed-door classified briefing on national security concerns about TikTok’s Chinese ownership.
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The bill would give ByteDance 165 days to divest TikTok; if it did not, app stores operated by Apple, Google, and others could not legally offer TikTok or provide web hosting services to ByteDance-controlled applications.