Facing Hill pressure, tech group kicks out TikTok

As TikTok kicked off its high-stakes court fight with the government this week, it unexpectedly lost one of its few remaining allies in Washington.

NetChoice — a Washington-based tech lobbying group that has counted TikTok as a member since 2019 — abruptly kicked the social media giant off of its membership rolls this week. Two people familiar with the decision, and who were granted anonymity to speak frankly about a sensitive issue, told POLITICO that NetChoice made the move after its ties to TikTok came under scrutiny by the office of Republican House Majority Leader Steve Scalise.

It’s yet another blow for the popular video-sharing app, which is now in real danger of losing the fight for its life.

Last month, Congress unexpectedly passed legislation that would force TikTok to divest from ByteDance, its Beijing-based parent company, or be banned in the United States, largely over national security concerns. TikTok is now challenging that law in court, but its fate remains uncertain.

When President Joe Biden signed the TikTok law in late April, it capped off a dismal multiyear lobbying fight that the China-linked app at times struggled to navigate, or even fully understand.

And as lawmakers maneuvered to pass the TikTok bill, there were rumblings that Washington lobbyists who worked with the company could face a backlash from Congress — a possibility that now appears to be panning out.

TikTok was still listed as a member of NetChoice on Wednesday, according to an archived version of the trade group’s membership page. But by Thursday the organization, whose members include Amazon, Alibaba, Google and Meta, did not list it.

The two people familiar with the matter said NetChoice — whose tech advocacy often leans to the right — came under pressure from Scalise’s office to dump TikTok. A third person, who requested anonymity for the same reason, said that while no threat was made, NetChoice was told that the House Select Committee on China would be investigating groups associated with TikTok and chose to sever ties as a result.

“Significant bipartisan majorities in both the House and the Senate deemed TikTok a grave national security threat and the President signed a bill into law requiring them to divest from the [Chinese Communist Party],” a Scalise spokesperson told POLITICO. “It should not come as a surprise to those representing TikTok that as long as TikTok remains connected to the CCP, Congress will continue its rigorous oversight efforts to safeguard Americans from foreign threats.”

In a statement, TikTok spokesperson Alex Haurek decried “brazen efforts” from the House Select Committee on China “to intimidate private organizations for associating with a company with 170 million American users.”

Haurek called it “a clear abuse of power that smacks of McCarthyism” and said it was “a sad day when members of Congress single out individual companies without evidence while trampling on constitutional rights and the democratic process.”

A NetChoice spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.

Over the last few months, NetChoice had kept a low profile in Washington when it came to TikTok. Even as lawmakers in both parties ratcheted up the pressure, the group didn’t do much to publicly defend its member company.

But NetChoice has been a crucial player in the successful effort to shoot down state-level TikTok bans. The lobbying group was particularly active in Montana, which recently passed a law that would have banned the app statewide but which was blocked by a judge. NetChoice filed an advocacy brief on behalf of TikTok in Montana as recently as Monday.

The pressure on TikTok-affiliated lobbyists from GOP congressional leadership comes at a strange time in the presidential campaign cycle, with former president and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump now attacking Biden for signing the bill that could ban the app.

“Just so everyone knows, especially the young people, Crooked Joe Biden is responsible for banning TikTok,” Trump posted to Truth Social on Thursday. “He is the one pushing it to close, and doing it to help his friends over at Facebook become richer and more dominant, and able to continue to fight, perhaps illegally, the Republican Party.”