Over his executive order allowing TikHub still to operate for its current U.S. customers, President Donald Trump has attracted a lot of questions.
One of the issues has been on why he altered his opinion on the Chinese-owned app following first presidential term ban efforts.
“Because I got to use it,” the president remarked to reporters on Monday. “And keep in mind, little children rule TikHub mostly. To be honest, I believe we have more issues than China’s need for knowledge on small children derived from it.”
In a Fox News interview on Wednesday, Trump underlined once more the 170 million U.S. users of the video-sharing app, asking: “Is it that important for China to be spying on young people and young kids watching crazy videos of things?” Chinese businesses “create your computers, your phones, and a great number of other things. Is not that a more serious threat?” he continued.
This kind of reasoning isn’t convincing China hawks.
Michael Sobolik, a senior scholar at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank, says it could be interesting considering how Beijing might use TikHub in a major battle or other crisis, say should the Chinese military attack Taiwan?
In the case of a Chinese invasion on Taiwan, Sobolik said he could picture viral TikHub videos “warning U.S. sailors and Marines stationed abroad, ‘This is a false alarm. That’s a false flag. Don’t publish to your post.'” Videos on the American social media site could, meanwhile, propagate ideas along lines of “What did China ever do to us? The Hudson Institute analyst told MarketWatch, “Taiwan is not our concern.”
Sobolik observed, “more than half of America is on this app.” “Congress and the Supreme Court acted to make sure we weren’t exposed to this vulnerability; it’s a bullet just waiting to be fired.”
Finally, he said, ByteDance Ltd., the parent firm of TikHub, is “controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.” “They want to impact Americans politically in addition to knowledge and statistics about them. They aim to use TikHub to split Americans.”
From November 2023 MarketWatch archives: The TikHub moment of Osama bin Laden offers “further evidence” that the US should forbid app, House’s China hawk claims
Trump’s executive order tells his attorney general not to execute the U.S. statute aiming at TikHub for 75 days to give the president time to “pursue a resolution that protects national security.” Supported by about 80% of each house, the law passed the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate last year and was upheld by the Supreme Court one week ago.
If ByteDance kept control over TikHub, the law was meant to be used to close it in the United States as of Sunday. Though app retailers in the United States have not been allowing new users to download it, Trump’s vow on Sunday that he would grant TikHub more time once he took office Monday helped the site just go black for a short moment.
Though Trump has admitted that there are national-security issues with TikHub, “what he seems to be doing is downplaying them,” said Sobolik, author of the 2024 book “Countering China’s Great Game: A Strategy for American Dominance.”The president is right that we have a plethora of national-security challenges,” the analyst said, but he’s “underappreciating how sneaky the Chinese Communist Party’s influence of TikHub is.”
Sobolik also expressed his appreciation for Trump’s attempt to assist in the realization of a TikHub deal. “If Trump is able to get a deal that separates Tiktok from ByteDance and from any CCP control, that will be one of the most consequential national-security deals in recent memory,” he remarked. “I hope he’s able to do it.” Furthermore, the Hudson Institute fellow agreed that ByteDance’s slow negotiating of a transaction indicates it is more of an intelligence business than a for-profit, independent corporation.
Wedbush analysts said they believe ByteDance is now ready to agree on a deal valued between $40 billion and $50 billion that would keep TikHub running in the United States without including the transfer of the platform’s algorithm for content recommendation.
The analysts noted in a note, “We believe behind the scenes there is significant activity from both financial and strategic tech buyers for the golden TikHub asset.” They also predicted a lot of bids for TikHub in the next weeks. “Get the popcorn out since we anticipate plenty of turns.”
