Apple and Google must prepare to remove TikTok from app stores by January 19, lawmakers warn

Reuters
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Google parent Alphabet and Apple must be ready to remove TikTok from US app stores on January 19, two US lawmakers said in a letter to the company’s CEOs on Friday.

The bipartisan letter came from the two leaders of the US House of Representatives’ China Committee: Rep. John Moolenaar, Republican, who chairs the committee, and Raja Krishnamoorthi, the top Democrat on the panel.

Last week, a US federal appeals court upheld a law requiring China-based ByteDance to take down TikTok in the United States. face the ban. The app is used by 170 million Americans.

Separately, Moolenaar and Krishnamoorthi also called on TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew to sell the app: “Congress has acted decisively to defend the national security of the United States and protect American users of TikTok from the Chinese Communist Party,” the lawmakers wrote. “We urge TikTok to immediately implement a qualified divestment.”

Apple, Alphabet and TikTok did not immediately comment. On Monday, ByteDance and TikTok merged emergency offer temporarily blocking the law pending review by the US Supreme Court.

The Justice Department said on Wednesday that if the ban goes into effect on January 19, it “would not directly prohibit the following on TikTok” by Apple or Google users who have already downloaded TikTok. But he conceded that a ban on support “will ultimately render the application unviable”.

In response, TikTok said on Thursday that — absent a court order — the law means the app will disappear from mobile app stores on January 19 and “will not be available to the half of the country that doesn’t use the app.” He warned that ending support services would “cripple the US platform and make it completely unusable”.

According to ByteDance and TikTok, President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to avoid a ban on TikTok.

Republican Senator Josh Hawley expects ByteDance to sell TikTok because the law leaves no wiggle room, he said in an interview.

“The statute is what the statute is,” Hawley said. “The main problem is under Chinese supervision, Beijing’s supervision – that’s the problem.”