US lawmakers' bill to ban popular social media app TikTok — if its parent company ByteDance doesn't divest ownership — could be fast-tracked by Congress by attaching it to larger security bills and spending packages, namely the aid packages being considered for Ukraine and Israel.

Yahoo Finance Senior Columnist Rick Newman expands upon the process of fast-tracking a bill and the pressure it places on Chinese-owned ByteDance regardless of whether it gets passed or not.

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This post was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.

Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: Step forward in Congress's fight against TikTok. A bill forcing the app's parent company ByteDance to divest ownership could be fast tracked. To explain more, Yahoo Finance's Rick Newman, what does it mean to be fast tracked?

RICK NEWMAN: Well, this is going to be attached with these supplemental security bills. The funding for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan and for humanitarian relief in Gaza. So that is a mechanism to get this thing passed. And honestly, this is actually looking like more realistic than I certainly thought.

JULIE HYMAN: It's not a lot of opposition to it?

RICK NEWMAN: There is some opposition to it in the Senate. But if the house could actually get these three or four bills. However, many number there are, actually pass these things. I mean, we've been waiting on these bills for, I mean, for Ukraine. We've been waiting on Ukraine for six months. And for Israel almost as long. And there's other important stuff in there too. So these now have the importance or priority level of must pass legislation. And if you put the TikTok ban in there, then it goes to the Senate.

And then the Senate this-- to get this done, the Senate's probably not going to say we're going to redo this. And send it back to the house because the view is that there's like only one shot to get this through the House. So this is looking a lot more plausible than I think it did even just a couple of weeks ago. Now just to be clear, this is-- there are two parts to this. It would-- the main thing is to force the Chinese owners to divest ownership of ByteDance. The main thing is not to shut it down. The main thing is to just force a sale. So this platform that's so popular in the United States is not owned by a Chinese company.

But then the band is the-- would be the punishment if it doesn't happen. And it looks like there will be a one year grace period to make that happen. So importantly, people are not going to be losing TikTok before the 2024 election is over. I think that's an important thing to point out.

JOSH LIPTON: Yeah, one thing that's interesting, if you force the divestiture. It's not like I imagine the Chinese are going to let the algorithm come over. I mean, the secret sauce stays in Beijing. So then what would be the value to a potential buyer, is just the users?

RICK NEWMAN: The data goes. The data resides someplace.

JOSH LIPTON: And they just think I'll remake this app?

RICK NEWMAN: The data that's on that-- of all the user data that the parent company has. I mean, the concern is-- I mean, one of the concerns is that could all go straight to the Chinese government if the Chinese government ever said we wanted, which they can do. I mean, you can't do that so much here in the United States without certain court orders and stuff. But they can do that in China. And also that the Chinese government could use TikTok for propaganda purposes. Which has not happened yet. But the concern is that it could and they're trying to just head this off.