TikTok’s parent company in China, ByteDance, spent $2.14 million on lobbying the U.S. government in the second quarter, according to a federal lobbying disclosure report made public on July 20.
That amount was an increase of 130 percent from the previous quarter, when the Beijing-based company spent $930,000 on lobbying in the United States. For the entire year of 2021, ByteDance spent over $4.7 million on lobbying, according to a federal database.
ByteDance’s lobbying effort targeted the Executive Office of the President, the Department of Commerce, the Department of State, the Department of Defense, the Senate, and the House, according to the report.
Legislation
The report said ByteDance lobbied on a variety of issues related to “internet technology and learning-enabled content platforms,” including several pieces of U.S. legislation. One of the U.S. bills it lobbied on was the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act of 2021 (USICA), a bill that was passed by the Senate with a partisan vote of 68–32 in June last year….