Trump Is Letting TikTok (and China) Win

Not so long ago, the confrontation between the U.S. government and TikTok looked to be a rare 21st-century example of bipartisan seriousness to protect the national interest.

In President Trump’s first term, he was among the earliest political leaders to point out the security risks of having a Chinese company control one of the largest American social media platforms. After President Joe Biden took office, he adopted a similar stance. Last year Congress passed a bill by overwhelming votes — 360 to 58 in the House and 79 to 18 in the Senate — requiring that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, sell it, and Mr. Biden signed the bill. In January the Supreme Court upheld the law’s legality in a unanimous vote. Every branch of the federal government seemed aligned.

But this bipartisan resolve collapsed in a matter of days, as Mr. Biden left office and Mr. Trump began his second term. For the past six months, the Trump administration has simply refused to enforce the law. TikTok continues to operate as before. ByteDance (which, like all Chinese companies, answers to the ruling Communist Party) continues to amass personal data about Americans and shape national discourse through its secretive algorithm for promoting videos. The Chinese government has long exercised tight control and censorship in its own country — and now potentially has outsize influence over information in the United States.

Legal scholars, be they liberal or conservative, have criticized Mr. Trump’s nonenforcement as illegal. Among the many lawless acts of his second term, the disregard for a recently passed federal law is among the most brazen. It is also a gift to the world’s most powerful authoritarian government.

Two alarming features of the current political scene have carried us to this point. The first is Mr. Trump’s tendency to put his interests ahead of the rule of law and national security. He reversed his position on TikTok last year after meeting with Jeff Yass, a major donor to Republicans whose company owns part of ByteDance. (Mr. Trump said they did not discuss the app.) The president’s announcement lacked any coherent justification, though he did note that he had become “a big star” on the platform. By Inauguration Day, he had amassed nearly 15 million followers, and he clearly recognized that the platform helped him spread his message.

Mr. Trump’s approach empowers him in key ways. Not only can he and his allies continue using TikTok, but he also has leverage over ByteDance and the tech companies that host TikTok on app stores or servers, including Google, Apple and Oracle. Under the law, the Justice Department can fine companies that keep TikTok on U.S. app stores and servers. After Mr. Trump delayed the ban, the department promised that it would not penalize the companies for disobeying the law, but that promise is hardly binding. As a result, these companies, including ByteDance, have reason to want to remain in the good graces of the administration. “Corporations operate under a sword of Damocles in every interaction with the White House,” Alan Z. Rozenshtein of the University of Minnesota Law School has noted.

The second factor is broader than Mr. Trump. It is the meekness of Congress, especially in response to his power grabs. The founders intended Congress to be the most active of the three branches of government. That is why it is the subject of Article I of the Constitution. The founders worried about the rise of another king, and they saw a powerful legislature as protection against that possibility.

The passage of the TikTok law seemed like an example of Congress living up to the founders’ aspirations. Lawmakers worked across party lines and acted decisively on a security risk. The aftermath of the law’s passage, however, has highlighted the founders’ fears. Mr. Trump has ignored the law, and Congress has done little in response. It has not held new hearings to highlight the TikTok threat. It has not sued Mr. Trump for refusing to enforce the law. It has not made enforcement of the law a condition of passing other legislation, such as on tax cuts and enhanced border security. While some lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have spoken out, they cannot do much when the Republican majority is intent on acceding to Mr. Trump.

This timidity has become the norm for Congress, in areas far beyond this law. Legislators have voluntarily surrendered their power to the president and frequently act not as the heart of the American government but as a rubber stamp for one man.

If anything, the evidence that TikTok presents a security threat has grown since Congress passed the law. After its enactment, a study published last August used an elegant design to conclude that TikTok’s algorithm is biased. The researchers, at the Network Contagion Research Institute and Rutgers University, evaluated the number of likes that a video received as a measure of its popularity with users.

A video with more likes should receive more views, if the algorithm worked normally. Instead, the researchers found, pro-China videos (including those with patriotic scenes and tourism promotion) received more views than their number of likes suggested they should. Anti-China videos (such as those honoring the Tiananmen Square protests) received fewer. This combination is a sign that TikTok’s algorithm amplifies pro-China videos and suppresses anti-China content. Tellingly, the same patterns do not hold on YouTube.

Other studies also found evidence of TikTok’s bias. These findings suggest that TikTok is already a vehicle for propaganda, potentially influencing Americans’ opinions about issues like the future of Taiwan and China’s repression of predominantly Muslim Uyghurs.

We know that forcing the sale of a popular app is no small step. Critics of a TikTok ban argue that it violates First Amendment protections for free speech. But the Supreme Court considered this argument, and its unanimous ruling persuasively rejected it. The justices noted that the law did not target speech based on its content, function or purpose. It targeted TikTok because a foreign adversary owns it and could use it against Americans. And there is a long history of Congress and the president being able to protect national security without violating the First Amendment. A historical comparison is instructive: During the Cold War, Soviet organizations would not have been allowed to own Life magazine, NBC or American radio stations.

It is also worth remembering that the law does not shutter TikTok; it can continue operating if ByteDance sells it. As entertaining and informative as TikTok can be, its value does not depend on its parent company answering to the Chinese government.

China policy has been a rare area of bipartisan consensus in recent years. China’s leaders have made clear that they seek to weaken the United States globally and strengthen other authoritarian leaders, most notably Vladimir Putin of Russia. Both Democrats and Republicans have warned about China’s aggressive behavior, including in the South China Sea, its attempts to corner the market on some rare minerals and its widespread theft of intellectual property. To leave TikTok off the list is naïve.

Mr. Trump has shown himself unwilling to confront China on TikTok for selfish reasons. Congress should step up. It should do what the founders intended and act as a bulwark of American democracy. It should insist that Mr. Trump enforce the law.

Source photographs by Carlos Barria/Reuters and Archive Photos, Three Lions/Hulton Archive, Zeynep Ozdelice and markOfshell, via Getty Images.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected].

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, WhatsApp and Threads.