The US subsidiary of Chinese viral video app TikTok has hired its first former members of Congress as it seeks to scroll past the Donald Trump era.
Ex-Sens. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and John Breaux (D-La.) of Crossroads Strategies will lobby on “internet technology and learning-enabled content platforms” for California-based TikTok Inc., according to a new lobbying filing. The registration was effective Dec. 7.
Also lobbying on the account are Crossroads Executive Vice Presidents Ben McMakin and Sam Adcock. McMakin is a former legislative director for Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the third-most senior Democrat in the Senate.
This marks the first lobbying hire for TikTok itself. Four other firms lobby for parent company ByteDance: Monument Advocacy, K & L Gates, Mehlman Castagnetti and American Continental Group. That’s on top of ByteDance’s in-house lobbying, which topped $1.5 million in the first three quarters of 2020 (see chart below).
The new push comes as TikTok has gotten a reprieve from this summer’s demand by the Trump administration that ByteDance sell the app, citing concerns that US users’ data could be shared with the Chinese government. This past week the US government extended the deadline in a court battle with TikTok until Feb. 18, kicking the issue over to the Joe Biden administration.
Biden shared few specifics about his approach to Chinese technology companies during the presidential campaign, but many of his advisers share Trump’s concerns about unfair trade practices. The president-elect himself called Chinese President Xi Jinping a “thug” last year. And the Biden campaign has labeled China’s discrimination against its Muslim Uyghur minority “genocide.”
Crossroads’ hiring brings to at least six the number of former members of Congress registered to lobby for Chinese technology companies. Others include:
- Former House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.), who is lobbying for tech conglomerate Tencent and image sensor manufacturer Omnivision via Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck;
- Former Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), a Mercury Public Affairs lobbyist for video-surveillance company Hikvision;
- Former Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.), who lobbies for cloud computing company Inspur via Sidley Austin; and
- Former Rep. Jon Christensen (R-Neb.), who is helping smartphone maker OnePlus with visa applications via Appo-G.
A Foreign Lobby Report analysis (see chart below) of lobbying filings reveals that at least 15 Chinese technology companies spent almost $16 million in lobbying and public relations in the first three quarters of 2020. That’s up from around $15.3 million for all of 2019, which itself dwarfed 2018.
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The lobbying surge has not been without controversy. Last week former Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said she would drop Hikvision after news of her involvement sparked a backlash. The company is accused of involvement in the surveillance of Uyghurs in the western province of Xinjiang.
ByteDance in particular has been ramping up its US presence in recent months to push back against political and economic threats to its popularity with young people, a coveted demographic. The company claims 100 million active monthly users in the US.
Former Walt Disney executive Kevin Mayer became the company’s first chief executive in June but quit after 100 days. Michael Beckerman, a former president of the Internet Association, continues to run the company’s in-house lobbying team, which also includes:
- David Urban, a senior adviser to the 2016 Trump campaign and former chief of staff to former Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania;
- Michael Bloom, a former senior aide to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.);
- Kim Lipsky, a former Democratic staff director of the Senate commerce panel; and
- Edgar McConnell Abrams, a former chief of staff to ex-Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.).
TikTok is the second foreign client for Lott and Breaux since their acrimonious departure from Squire Patton Boggs in June 2020. They are also lobbying for the government of Alberta, the western Canadian province that is part-owner of the Keystone XL oil pipeline that Biden has vowed to block.
Read more: Canada province braces for fight with Biden over Keystone Pipeline
Lobbying by Chinese technology firms and their US affiliates
Company | Current lobbying issues | Influence firms | 2020 spending (Q1 – Q3) | 2019 spending (excluding subcontractors) |
ByteDance (Entertainment) | Parent company of TikTok Targeted by President Donald Trump Executive Order of Aug. 6, 2020 | ByteDance (in-house lobbying) Covington & Burling Monument Advocacy K & L Gates Mehlman Castagnetti American Continental Group | $1.53 million terminated $330,000 $120,000 $300,000 $260,000 | $270,000 $140,000 $100,000 $40,000 New in 2020 New in 2020 |
DJI Technology Inc. (Drones) | Accused of human rights abuses in Xinjiang Added to Commerce Department “entity list” restricting US technology exports to the company on Dec. 18, 2020 | DJI Technology Inc. (in-house lobbying) K & L Gates BGR Gov’t Affairs Akin Gump Cassidy & Associates CLS Strategies | $1 million $190,000 terminated $240,000 $90,000 $10,000 | $680,000 $240,000 $80,000 $40,000 New in 2020 New in 2020 |
Fujian Jinhua (Semi-conductors) | Accused of intellectual property theft Added to Commerce Department entity list in October 2018 | Steptoe & Johnson Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck Jim Handy Blueprint Communications | $210,000 $360,000 Unknown $17,500/month | $240,000 $670,000 Unknown New in 2020 |
Hikvision (Video Surveillance) | Accused of human rights abuses in Xinjiang Added to Commerce Department entity list in October 2019 | Sidley Austin Glover Park Group Mercury Public Affairs Burson-Marsteller (public relations) | $1.5 million terminated $767,000 (Jan. – June) $1.04 million (Jan. – June) | $640,000 $240,000 $1.4 million $820,000 |
Huawei Technologies (Tele- communications) | Accused of being a threat to US national security Added to Commerce Department entity list in May 2019 Designated a national security threat by the Federal Communications Commission in June 2020 | Huawei Technologies USA (in-house lobbying) Jones Day Racepoint Global (public relations) Steptoe & Johnson Sidley Austin Squire Patton Boggs Pivot Integrated Communications Ruder Finn (public relations) | $450,000 $0* $2.4 million $160,000 $0* $380,000 $964,000 (terminated) Unknown** | $2.99 million $60,000 $1.05 million $210,000 $0* $230,000 $282,000 New in 2020 |
iFLYTEK (Voice recognition) | Accused of human rights abuses in Xinjiang Added to Commerce Department entity list in May 2019 | Chartwell Strategy Group Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman | $300,000 $753,000 (Feb-July) | $150,000 $865,000 (through Jan. 2020) |
Inspur Group (Cloud computing) | Added to list of Department of Defense list of “Communist Chinese military companies” in June 2020 | Sidley Austin | Unknown | No lobbying |
Lenovo (Computers) | Dutko Worldwide | $100,000 | $260,000 | |
Lexmark (Printers) | Richard Goodstein Venn Strategies | $120,000 $120,000 | $160,000 $0* | |
Omnivision Technologies (Image sensors) | Approved to sell image sensors to Huawei in Oct. 2020 | Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck | Unknown | No lobbying |
OnePlus (Smartphones) | APPO-G | Unknown | No lobbying | |
Riot Games (Video games) | Owned by Tencent (see below) | Platinum Advisors | $150,000 | No lobbying |
Semiconductor Manufacturing Int’l Corp (SMIC) (Semi-conductors) | Accused of ties to entities of concern in the Chinese military industrial complex Added to Commerce Department “entity list” restricting US technology exports to the company on Dec. 18, 2020 | Akin Gump Capitol Counsel (via Akin Gump) | $50,000 Unknown | No lobbying |
Tencent (Tech conglomerate) | Parent company of WeChat app Targeted by President Donald Trump’s executive order of Aug. 6, 2020 | Tencent Holdings (in-house lobbying) Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison Toby Myerson Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck | $500,000 $210,000 $150,000 $130,000 | No lobbying |
ZTE Corporation (Tele- communications) | Designated a national security threat by the Federal Communications Commission in June 2020 | ZTE USA (in-house lobbying) APPO-G Hogan Lovells Akin Gump | $30,000 $50,000 terminated $850,000 | $120,000 $150,000 $2.94 million $80,000 |
** Huawei signed a year-long, $1.45 million contract with Ruder Finn at the end of October
Source: Lobbying Disclosure Act (Congress) / Foreign Agents Registration Act (Department of Justice)