As U.S. consumers face 125% tariffs on all Chinese imports, China hawks in Washington worry that President Donald Trump’s fixation on trade imbalance distracts from solving what they consider to be one of the biggest threats to national security: the Chinese government’s ties to TikTok.
“The big problem with the president is spending way too much time tariffing the rest of the world instead of dealing with an issue that is front and center,” Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi told NOTUS. “We gotta do our work and get this deal done right now.”
Trump pushed back a deadline for ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, to sell the app or else face a law banning it from the U.S. over the potential for the Chinese government to use it for spying or data gathering. Now, some of the original brokers of the law worry that the same tariff policies that Trump says will help the U.S. stay ahead of its primary foreign adversary will block the way for a TikTok deal.