The US House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a bill on Wednesday that would force TikTok to divest from its Chinese owner or get banned from the United States.
The lawmakers voted 352 in favor of the proposed law and 65 against, in a rare moment of bipartisan unity in politically divided Washington.
The legislation is the biggest threat yet to the video-sharing app, which has surged to huge popularity across the world all while causing intense nervousness amongst governments and security officials about its Chinese ownership and its potential subservience to the Communist Party in Beijing.
President Joe Biden will sign the bill, known officially as the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act,” into law if it came to his desk, the White House had earlier said.
The measure, which passed unanimously through committee last week, would require TikTok’s parent company ByteDance to sell the app within 180 days or see it barred from the Apple and Google app stores in the United States.
It would also give the president power to designate other applications to be a national security threat if under the control of a country considered adversarial to the US.
