Closing down TikTok would hurt the U.S. economy and devastate the livelihoods of numerous freelancers and influencers on the platform, said U.S. economist Anthony Chan, during an interview with China Global Television Network (CGTN).
In April, U.S. President Joe Biden enacted the law -- which only gave ByteDance 270 days to sell TikTok to a non-Chinese buyer. If ByteDance does not sell TikTok by Jan. 19, 2025, the law will require Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores, leading to a ban of the app.
The TikTok ban, based on unfounded national security concerns due to its Chinese ownership, has drawn widespread criticism.
In May, TikTok sued the U.S. government to block the potential ban.
A U.S. federal appeals court on Friday upheld the law despite widespread opposition.
TikTok said in a statement on Friday that the ban was based upon inaccurate, flawed and hypothetical information, resulting in outright censorship of the American people.
Anthony Chan, former chief economist at JPMorgan Chase and Company, believes that the TikTok ban would hurt both freedom of speech in the United States and have economic consequences.
He mentioned that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is also a user of TikTok with huge number of followers, and he once hailed TikTok's role as a good competitor of other social media platforms.
"It is no a secret that he said that in the past it's a good competitor of other social media platforms like Meta. So, as a result we should keep it. So, I think he could use his power in order to try to help TikTok gain a little bit more time. But let's not lose sight of the fact that there is that legal option that they can actually appeal to the Supreme Court. And there is no doubt that if you look at other decisions that are made by the Supreme Court, they don't differ that much from the references and the wishes of the president-elect. So that's another good thing that TikTok has on its side," said Chan.
The United States is one of TikTok's biggest markets with 170 million users, and many of them have been using the platform to make a living, not just for entertainment.
"You can easily make an economic case that closing down TikTok would hurt the U.S. economy, certainly hurt the ability of many of these freelancers and influencers to basically make a living. Many influencers make most of their money on TikTok as a social media outlet, and they like it so much that they would not like to have to go to the other media outlets where they are now entrenched. They have a good following. They're making money. They don't want to start all over in another platform," Chan stated.
Closing down TikTok would hurt US economy: economist
Closing down TikTok would hurt US economy: economist
Closing down TikTok would hurt US economy: economist
