US Senate Can Extend TikTok Divestment Time Limit Up To One Year

Chairman of the Senate Trade Committee, Maria Cantwell,

JAKARTA - The chairman of the US Senate Commerce Committee said on Wednesday April 10 that legislators could extend the proposed one-year deadline to force parent company TikTok, ByteDance from China, to sell short video apps used by 170 million Americans.

The US House of Representatives voted 352-65 on March 13 to give ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, about selling his assets in the US, or facing bans.

Chairman of the Senate Trade Committee, Maria Cantwell, said she liked the idea of extending the deadline to one year. "I think it will be a good component to ensure success," she told reporters on Wednesday. "We're talking to our colleagues, people have questions."

The congressional assistant stated that the idea of a one-year deadline has been discussed. Longer deadlines will put a potential ban on TikTok in 2025 and after the November presidential election.

On Monday, April 8, Cantwell told reporters he would meet with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner. "Then we will have a strategy plan on how to proceed," Cantwell said.

On Wednesday, Cantwell said it was still "perhaps" the Senate would take action against the bill of the Council, but he stressed that senators wanted to make the bill stronger and set it up better legally. He noted that the administration efforts of former US President Donald Trump and the state of Montana failed to ban TikTok.

This week, Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell, backed the divestment coercion by calling TikTok America's "largest strategic rival to threaten our security on US soil in tens of millions of homes of Americans."

TikTok has become a major issue in Washington. Legislators have been flooded with demands from users who oppose the law.

"TikTok's restrictions will violate the rights of America's 170 million First Amendment rights," TikTok said on Friday, April 5.

Many US President Joe Biden's legislators and governments say TikTok poses a national security risk as China could force TikTok to share American user data, while TikTok insists that it never shares US data and will not.

TikTok says it has spent more than $1.5 billion to protect US data and store it in the US.