ver the past two months, U.S. lawmakers have accelerated calls to ban TikTok, the most popular app in the world — or to force its China-based parent company, ByteDance, to sell TikTok’s U.S. operations to an American company.
If the CFIUS negotiation is successful, ByteDance may be able to continue to operate TikTok in the U.S. But that negotiation might also flop if it fails to satisfy either the Biden Administration, or Congress. If the Administration reaches an agreement with TikTok that Congress thinks is too weak, then it could pass legislation requiring the Administration to carry out a ban.
The IEEPA, or International Emergency Economic Powers Act, empowers the President to declare a national security emergency, and then use his executive powers to regulate potentially risky commercial transactions with foreign entities. The law is “an extremely powerful tool that Presidents have used I don’t know how many dozens and dozens of times,” said Joel Richard Paul, professor of constitutional and national security law at UC Law San Francisco.
The Berman Amendments say that “non-commercial” and “informational” speech fall outside the IEEPA, and that the law — which is, at its core, about regulating financial transactions with foreign companies — shouldn’t shut down regular people’s exercise of their free speech rights.Joel Richard Paul, Professor of Constitutional and National Security at UC Law San Francisco