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December 29, 2024 - 7:30pm
The Republicans may have won in November, but what that victory means in terms of policy remains fluid, especially with a figure as protean as Donald Trump at the helm. During his first term Trump supported a ban on TikTok, and in April Congress passed a law that would prohibit the platform unless it was sold by its parent company, ByteDance. But the President-elect has now raised doubts about the ban, and his legal team has this week filed a brief with the Supreme Court asking it to put a hold on that law until he enters the White House in January. Written by Trump’s nominee to be the next solicitor general, this legal filing reveals another tension between MAGA populists and techno-libertarians.
Populists and nationalists have long pushed for a TikTok ban. They have accused ByteDance of having ties to the Chinese Communist Party and have worried about the app’s potential for censorship. They have also raised concerns about TikTok’s data-collection protocols. As Missouri Senator Josh Hawley said in an interview earlier this year, “The app collects way more information than it needs to to feed its algorithm, and that information is available to the Chinese Communist Party upon request […] I don’t think we want Americans’ text messages to be read, or their geolocations to be available to the CCP, so it can build a dossier on every American.”
When, in 2020, Trump issued an executive order that would have banned TikTok, he cited some of those very same concerns about data and national security. For populists, the battle over TikTok is about great-power conflict and checking the reach of digital conglomerates.
Trump’s newfound allies in tech instead see the TikTok controversy through the lenses of freedom of speech and global commerce. Elon Musk said in April that banning the platform “would be contrary to freedom of speech and expression. It is not what America stands for.” Of course, these libertarian principles might sometimes intersect with business interests: at least one major Republican donor has a significant financial stake in ByteDance, and a forced divestment or a ban could seriously impact that investment.
The President-elect’s legal filing recapitulates many of these tech arguments. It claims that TikTok divestment has profound implications for the “free speech interests of over 170 million ordinary Americans”. It also alludes to US tech titans’ own financial incentives to have governments take a hands-off approach to tech. The legal brief warns that a TikTok ban could set a “dangerous global precedent” that might encourage other nations to start banning or otherwise regulating foreign-owned social-media apps.
This filing also reveals Trump’s love of maximal flexibility. It purports to take no stand on the merits of the TikTok law itself and also recognises that there are real national security concerns at stake. Instead, Trump’s team asks for a stay in order for him to use his “consummate dealmaking expertise” to “negotiate a resolution to save the platform”. Trump has himself become a viral figure on TikTok, and perhaps he hopes that striking a deal could meet the demands of both populists and techies. For instance, he could help broker the sale of TikTok to a third party not headquartered in China or allow the app to continue to operate in the US in exchange for other policy concessions from Beijing.
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SubscribeWhy do people like this author look at things like the TikTok ban and see it as a battle between populism and libertarianism? Wny not just see it as a TikTok ban and decide whether that is good or bad for the country right now? That Donald Trump supported a ban years ago doesn’t mean that he needs to support a ban now.
A president should be transactional, focused not on what is right or wrong in the abstract but what good or bad would be done in the real world. The relationship between the US and China is a complex one. Banning TikTok to poke the Chinese Communist Party in the eye seems to get us little in return.
Much better to put the arrow of a TikTok ban back in the quiver for Donald Trump to use in upcoming talks with Xi Jinping. He’s needs all the ammunition he can get.
Orange Man is Bad 🙂
He sees it as a battle between populism and libertarianism because that’s exactly what it is. The populists see an app harvesting large amounts of data for a hostile foreign regime and believe that preventing this from happening is the correct course of action, even if that does involve some censorship. The libertarians believe that any censorship is wrong, even if having a free for all works against the national interest.
Whilst I personally fall more into the first camp, both of these groups voted strongly for Trump, and trying to keep both of these contradictory parties on board I think will prove incredibly difficult. Personally I think Trump will side with his wealthy donors in the tech industry over his more populist grass roots base but we’ll wait and see
Left-Populists are predominantly socialists and believe in the General Will or Direct Democracy philosophy outlined by Rousseau. Basically any representative responsive to popular sentiments is expected to continually govern according to the current outrage or “current thing.”
The idea of a representative democracy where those elected operate according to their best judgment as intended by the US framers or somebody like Edmund Burke is blasphemy to them. Its not even comprehensible.
Look at Thomas Paine. Paine was great agitating in America but wholly ineffective in France because the French form of Democracy was not repeatable. Direct Democracy like Democratic Socialism is wholly unsustainable in it’s failure to ever be content. Its perpetual upheaval.
You say perpetual upheaval like it’s a bad thing. In reality, the efforts of the few and powerful to dominate the nations and exert control and influence over others never end. What better way to limit the ability of oligarchs and tyrants than through constant change even if such change is basically random. Freedom is the vehicle by which this change is achieved, by giving everyone from the top to the bottom the freedom to demand and attempt to influence and change the system through political efforts, unionizing, technological innovation, free speech, free economic association, etc. Any system that encourages dynamism will always be preferable to one that encourages ‘stability’. The former creates new opportunities for different individuals and groups over time and encourages resilience and adaptability while the latter leads to crystallized, inflexible structures that are dominated by entrenched power and become obstacles to any change.
Consider what happened during COVID. A healthcare system that emphasized costs and profits had ruthlessly eliminated excess capacity and oversupply to the point the system had difficulty coping with a crisis, so much so that it prompted government to take expensive, disruptive, radical measures to prevent complete collapse. The supply chains that had been optimized over decades for efficiency broke down because of overspecialization. Entire global supply chains failed in multiple categories of products because one nation, China, had monopolized so many pieces of the chain.
In reality, the perpetual upheaval part of things is a large part of how a nation as large and diverse as the USA can function at all. There simply isn’t, and never has been, enough common culture and common interest to avert constant conflict. The conflict is necessary for America to function properly. These internal conflicts generate novel solutions and force all parties to continually adapt and innovate. The conflicts between regions, states, and political parties may be difficult, but they also produce new ideas and help level the playing field. I think part of the reason things have gotten to where they are is that it has been entirely too stable for entirely too long. The parties started to agree to easily in too many different areas. Government was too easy for the powerful to manipulate. Businesses got too big to fail and the government got too cowed to let them. A little rebellion now and then is a good thing. Then again, I suppose I probably qualify as one of the ‘left-populists’ you mention.
Good points. Great points, in fact.
Progress always comes at the edge of chaos. Stasis means no innovation. It’s like Orson Welles said in the movie The Third Man:
And there is danger in being too efficient, too specialized. We need some slack in all complex systems (see the book Slack by Tom DeMarco), and we need some generalists to bring their viewpoint (see the book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World).
The ideal ecosystem for innovation has a few slow-moving big companies who promote efficiency and economies of scale and scope and many agile small companies who nip at their heels with new innovations. The big companies are too big to fail, but the small companies fail all the time.
Because it is a battle between populism and Big Tech, which has wormed its way into the Republican Party. Up until now, Trump has stood for something (broadly speaking, the people as opposed to the elite) but he is wavering.
Trump has taken the Big Tech shilling and is now in hoc to Emperor Musk and his mates and will dance to their tune. I suspect that will not be to the benefit of most.
At some point, campaign promises run into the harsh realities. This will be a difficult needle to thread. There are ways to keep US data on US soil and keep the CCP from accessing it while still allowing TikTok to operate in the US, but these were all explored before and both Bytedance and the CCP rejected them. What does Trump have now to offer that he and Biden didn’t over the past eight years? What can he possibly threaten them with that hasn’t already been threatened? Ultimately, even the best negotiator can’t negotiate with a brick wall. Even if some agreement is reached, the CCP has a known history of breaking agreements. They broke their treaty with Hong Kong. They abandoned the commitments they made in the ‘phase-one’ trade deal. Why should they be trusted to keep their word now when they haven’t before?
What has to be recognized is that we’re basically negotiating with a hostile regime. They won’t agree to any meaningful policy changes. They will continue to do what they want until somebody gives them a reason to stop. We should reduce our dependence on their economy to the furthest extent possible. We should negotiate with them as though they were a hostile power in war. At some point Trump will realize the Chinese won’t give him anything or make any meaningful deal. At that point, he should take a hard line stance on all things China. Banning Tiktok is a small step in that direction.
TikTok spent over $2 billion to move its data to a secure system on Oracle’s servers, as negotiated with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). It wasn’t ByteDance or China that rejected that deal. It was the US Congress and Joe Biden who flouted the deal and passed the “sale or ban” law.
You are right that we should not expect China to live up to any deal. That doesn’t mean we should not do any deals with China. Quite the opposite. Like it or not, China is a huge player in the world economy. We need China as much as China needs us. Donald Trump knows that, and will act accordingly. Even Joe Biden, in his senility, was careful to court Xi Jinping when he came to San Francisco last year.
To that end, I like that Donald Trump invited Xi Jinping to his inauguration. Nice touch. He got turned down, but the invitation sent a signal that went through even if it wasn’t accepted. That is, the door is always open to talks. We want to be friends, not enemies. But it’s your choice.
You are correct. It is possible to do deals with China. Negotiating with enemies is a necessary part of diplomacy. Throughout the first Cold War, the US made deals with the USSR to reduce the risk of conflict. That should be the model we follow here. I think it’s fine to negotiate so long as we start with the assumption that China is an enemy and any treaty shouldn’t take them at their word but rather include some kind of international third party monitoring for compliance. I’m skeptical they will agree to any such thing, but I suppose it’s possible.
I think a number of factors are still blinding people to the behavior of the Chinese regime. Economic interests, lingering globalist holdouts, and a reasonable fear of confrontation to name a few. The behavior of the Chinese regime over the past two decades and beyond merits far greater recognition of the dire risks of world changing conflict. Grand treaties of accommodation and concessions in exchange for “peace in our time” may or may not work. Trump’s attitude towards China is entirely too cavalier for my liking, and he has a penchant for overestimating his deal making ability. I feel like we should all be preparing for the worst, not holding out hopes of getting China to play nice. The ideal result is a slow and gradual economic decoupling that reduces the immediate economic fallout but recognizes that there is ultimately no reconciling the Chinese political and economic system with that of the US. We should be moving towards a stable geopolitical rivalry like the first Cold War. To my mind, that’s the safest course for all concerned. Maybe that’s happening behind the scenes and Trump is simply playing games making Chairman Xi guess his real intent. It’s fine if that’s the case but I still have my doubts based on Trump’s prior inconsistency.
I’m going to compare few things that seem unrelated but, in my opinion, are deeply connected. When American manufacturing is outsourced to China, the highest-paying tech jobs are done Indian immigrants, and call centers or other easy online jobs are also sent to India. What’s left are people with limited education, whose primary economic role becomes selling American culture. Among them, 17 million are on TikTok.
Now, when it’s proposed to ban TikTok, it means making 17 million people unemployed without offering them any alternative. This decision-making mirrors the outsourcing of jobs overseas—first taking manufacturing and tech jobs abroad and now taking away an app that provides income for many, including those earning millions from it.
At the end of the day, a simple question needs to be asked: What does America truly have that makes it special? If the U.S. relies on Indian workers to do the jobs and Chinese manufacturers to produce goods, what does America actually export or create? The answer highlights a deeper issue—American laws often seem to work against their own people. There’s no other way to explain it.
I recommend China to create another company like tiktok but with different name and with different ownership and let the goose chase begin exhaust the lawfare. Are they banning all China owned companies?
Someone inside is running havoc in America… corporations angry they lost competition to China in every area!
It’s all building – Trump in hoc to the Tech Bro Billionaires and most definitely not the ‘little guy’ and the ‘left behinds’.
His ego will be playing a part of course and the chance to do a better deal, but that’s not the main driver. That’s he needs Elon’s money and influence and Elon doesn’t like the Ban. Simple.
Why does Donald Trump need Elon Musk’s money or influence?
He has £500m in civil damages to pay, and doesn’t have it without selling assets. Watch for a deal with Truth Social where Elon helps him out. And Elon owns X with the ‘reach’ that gives him and can bankroll campaigns with ease. The latter gives him influence with Republicans who Trump still needs to get anything worthwhile done.
Elon of course will want stuff in return. The ability to keep his costs down by use of H-1B but one of them. On-going massive defence contracts another. He’ll extract others favours and DOGE will give him additional methods of gaining advantage.
In the meantime the ‘left behinds’ and ‘little guy’ been proper mugged off. Entirely predictable.
I don’t think Elon Musk will do much in government. That’s just not his thing. If he’s not in charge, he’s not interested. And with Donald Trump as president, Elon Musk will never be in charge.
I don’t know that there will be a big breakup between these two bros; the relationship may last. But the days when Elon Musk can roam the halls of Mar-a-Lago and jump uninvited into dinners with Jeff Bezos and phone calls with Volodymyr Zelensky are numbered. That ends January 20.
I agree with your first point, although given the House has to vote again on a budget in March it’s poss he uses his influence again to scupper a compromise and Govt grinds to a halt. That’s one way of saving money although would impact alot of Trump supporters.
Prediction – at some point in near future Trump has a health scare. Actuaries would predict it in a 78yr old man. At that point becomes more obvious the tech bros starting to switch horse to JD. Trump and Sons hate it and more open warfare kicks off.