According to a court filing on Monday, TikTokin warned that if the well-known app is essentially shut down in the US on January 19 due to national security concerns about its parent company based in China, U.S. small businesses and social media creators would lose $1.3 billion in revenue and earnings in just one month.
Those numbers would only climb if the closure goes for more than a month, claimed Blake Chandlee, president of global business solutions for TikTok, in that court filing.
Chandlee’s statement coincided with his firm’s request to a federal appeals court to temporarily halt a rule that would force internet providers and app stores run by Google and Apple to stop supporting TikTok on January 19 unless its parent company, ByteDance, sold the app.
ByteDance and TikTok intend to petition the Supreme Court to reverse a recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that upheld the statute.
In the filing, TikTok and ByteDance requested a temporary injunction, arguing that the Supreme Court, the only court with appellate jurisdiction over this lawsuit, should be given the chance to determine whether to examine this highly significant case.
If approved, the injunction would keep the app running until the Supreme Court makes a decision on whether to consider the appeal.
Additionally, the brief contended that an injunction is particularly appropriate as it will allow the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office on January 20, to determine whether or not to implement the legislation.
According to Chandlee, even if the bans are reversed after just one month, American small companies alone will lose over $1 billion in revenue if TikTok is essentially shut down in the US in January.
According to Chandlee, TikTok would lose 29% of its targeted global advertising revenue for 2025, and nearly two million American creators would lose nearly $300 million in earnings.
According to him, over 7 million American accounts were using TikTok for business purposes as of November.
“And according to an economic impact report that Oxford Economics prepared for the company, 69% of these businesses say that using TikTok has increased sales for their businesses in the last year, and 39% say that access to TikTok is critical to their business’s existence.”
Additionally, according to Chandlee’s filing, those companies’ TikTok marketing, advertising, and organic reach generated $24.2 billion in 2023 for the U.S. GDP, with TikTok’s own operations contributing an additional $8.5 billion.
Following worries about ByteDance’s purported ties to the Chinese government, Congress approved and President Joe Biden signed the bill that TikTok wants blocked for the time being last spring.
In a unanimous decision on Friday, a three-judge panel of the District of Columbia appeals court dismissed ByteDance’s claim that the ban would infringe upon the First Amendment rights of 170 million app users in the United States or other constitutional provisions.
In its written opinion, the panel stated that TikTok never explicitly denies that it has ever altered content at the direction of the People’s Republic of China, and that the U.S. government provided convincing evidence that the divestment law is specifically designed to safeguard national security.
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