TikTok Backlash as Congress Heads for Vote to Force Sale
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TikTok urged its users to call Congress and lawmakers to drop a bill that could ban the popular video-sharing app in the U.S., and those users listened.
But the plan backfired. Instead of dropping the bill, which was introduced just two days ago, the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved it in a 50-0 vote Thursday afternoon. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said he’s bringing it to a floor vote.
That was after beleaguered house staffers across the Capitol grounds endured hours of office phones ringing off the hook in an all-out push from TikTok users.
While TikTok the company has criticised efforts to ban it or crack down on it, this week’s legislative move prompted the social media company to appeal directly to users.
“TikTok is at risk of being shut down in the U.S. Call your representative now,” the app told its users when they logged into their accounts.
The app asked users to enter their ZIP codes and then directed them to their local congressional representatives.
TikTok was responding to a measure proposed Tuesday by Reps. Mike Gallagher (R, Wisc.) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D, Ill.), co-chairs of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, that claims TikTok “poses a grave threat to U.S. national security.”
TikTok, based in Singapore, is owned by China-based ByteDance, and that’s what lawmakers object to. The measure focuses on “foreign adversary controlled applications.” It would require ByteDance to divest of TikTok about five months after the law is passed, or risk being removed from app stores in the U.S.
That would make it illegal to distribute TikTok through any U.S. app store or from any U.S. web-hosting platform. TikTok says that is effectively a ban of the platform.
A TikTok spokesperson told Barron’s that “This legislation has a predetermined outcome: a total ban of TikTok in the United States.”
“The government is attempting to strip 170 million Americans of their Constitutional right to free expression,” spokesperson Alex Haurek said. “This will damage millions of businesses, deny artists an audience, and destroy the livelihoods of countless creators across the country.”
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew and others have repeatedly insisted that ByteDance and TikTok aren’t controlled by the Chinese government or Chinese Communist Party, and that U.S. user data is stored securely in Singapore and the U.S.
Krishnamoorthi said on X that TikTok has “launched a massive propaganda campaign, requiring users to call their representatives, and falsely labelling our legislation a ‘total ban’ of TikTok.”
“Phones are completely bogged down hearing from students, young adults, adults, and business owners who are all concerned at the option of losing their access to the platform,” a Republican aide told Axios.
The National Security Council has called the bill “an important and welcome step” to addressing risks to sensitive U.S. data, and the White House has said that if Congress passes it, President Joe Biden would sign it.
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A record-breaking $11 million sale at The Centennial Collection has set a new benchmark for luxury apartment living in Bondi Junction.
As interest rates, inflation and market sentiment fluctuate, investors are being urged to focus on data, not panic.
The federal budget has rattled property investors. But the biggest mistake isn’t the tax changes, it’s the conclusion many are drawing from them.
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The recent budget has forced a reckoning for property investors.
Negative gearing now restricted to new residential builds, the CGT discount gone and on paper, the numbers look different.
And many investors are responding by pivoting toward yield, prioritising cash flow over capital growth in a way that property strategists say misses the point entirely.
“The debate has shifted to yield versus growth as if they are opposing forces,” says Abdullah Nouh, founder of Melbourne-based buyers’ agency Mecca Property Group. “But that framing is itself the mistake.”
Nouh, who works with high-net-worth families and investors on long-term acquisition strategy, argues that capital growth remains the primary driver of genuine wealth creation and that the post-budget environment has made quality assets more important, not less.
The numbers make his case plainly. An additional $500 per week in rental income is welcome. A prestige asset appreciating by $1 million over a market cycle is transformative.
These are not equivalent outcomes, and portfolios built around yield at the expense of location and land value tend to generate income while wealth stands largely still.
The more nuanced shift Nouh is seeing among sophisticated investors is a move toward assets where both outcomes can be engineered simultaneously – established homes on substantial land in quality locations, where the existing dwelling can be repositioned, rental returns improved, and the underlying land value compounds independent of what sits on it.
For investors with existing equity, commercial property is also entering the conversation in a more serious way.
Prestige industrial assets, medical centres and long-leased essential retail offer income profiles that residential property in most capital city markets cannot currently match: longer lease terms, tenants covering outgoings, and greater predictability than the residential tenancy cycle.
“The investors who build lasting wealth are rarely the ones who chased yield or growth exclusively,” says Nouh.
“They are the ones who built a strategy they could sustain – one that generated enough income to hold quality assets through multiple cycles while those assets compounded in value.”
The budget has changed the settings. It has not changed the fundamentals.
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