Potential TikTok ban threatens US business of China's cross-border sellers

Luo Ziyan, who goes by the online name Daxiang and runs several profitable stores on TikTok for the e-commerce company Uebezz, is the envy of her fellow merchants in Yiwu, an export hub south of Shanghai.

The cross-border sales manager was among the first to use the globally popular short-video app to promote household goods to consumers in the United States and Southeast Asia, and her advice has been highly sought after by others hoping to replicate her success.

But after US President Joe Biden last month signed into law a Bill requiring TikTok’s Chinese owner ByteDance to divest the platform’s US operations in 270 days or face a ban on the app, Luo has received at least one query almost every day that revolves around one theme — is opening a TikTok shop still worth the trouble?

Luo said she was not quite sure how to answer. “If there hadn’t been this (Bill), I would definitely recommend them to do so in the US,” she said, adding that her business in the US is “certainly more profitable” than those in other markets.

Other cross-border merchants interviewed by the South China Morning Post are more certain.

“It’s not the time for newcomers to enter the US,” said Hong Ming, co-founder of the Shenzhen-based TikTok Seller Alliance.

The “divest-or-ban” Bill has thrown a spanner in the works of not just Chinese sellers planning to expand their business to TikTok, but also to the platform itself, which has been stepping up efforts to profit from its popularity among young Americans through e-commerce.

Initial efforts have shown promise. More than 500,000 merchants were selling to US users via TikTok at the end of last year, more than double the number three months earlier, the company said in its TikTok Shop Safety Report this