Approval of foreign funding bill that also includes Taiwan region, targets TikTok widely criticized
WASHINGTON — US President Joe Biden has signed into law a $94bn foreign funding bill that includes military aid to Israel, Ukraine, and others, ending a months-long legislative impasse in Washington over the assistance. The bill also includes a threat to ban the popular short video app TikTok.
Biden hailed the passage of the law on April 24 as a “good day for world peace”, saying that the measure makes the United States safer.
The lion’s share of funding contained in the legislation will support Ukraine with a total of nearly $61 billion, according to a summary of the legislation. The package will also provide over $26 billion in aid for Israel.
The bill will also provide $8.12 billion in military assistance to the so-called “US allies” in the Asia-Pacific region, including China’s Taiwan region, to which China has repeatedly voiced opposition.
While hailed by the Ukrainian presidency and Israeli authorities among others, the bill drew criticism and concerns from home and elsewhere.
On Israel, Biden framed the new assistance as an effort to help the country protect itself from attacks against Iran, according to Al Jazeera reports.
“My commitment to Israel — I want to make clear again — is ironclad,” Biden told reporters. “The security of Israel is critical.”
IfNotNow, a youth-led progressive Jewish group, said in a statement: “It is beyond unconscionable that Congress and President Biden are sending the Israeli military billions of dollars’ worth of weapons — with no strings attached — to massacre, starve, and expel Palestinian civilians.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said Biden “passed the moral point of no return” by signing the bill.
“President Biden has betrayed the soul of our nation and disregarded the will of the American people, who overwhelmingly support a ceasefire and oppose unconditional aid to Israel,” CAIR director Nihad Awad said in a statement.
The US Senate on April 23 voted to pass the foreign aid package by a vote of 79 to 18, after the proposal cleared the House on April 20.
US Senator Bernie Sanders decried the approval of the supplemental funding for Israel, calling it a “dark day” for the US Senate. He added that Washington should not fund right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war on Gaza.
“The housing in Gaza is destroyed; the infrastructure in Gaza is destroyed; the health care system in Gaza is destroyed; the educational system in Gaza is destroyed. Enough is enough,” Sanders said in a statement on April 23.
Yet somehow the bill even included a threat to ban TikTok in the US unless TikTok is divested from its Chinese parent company ByteDance, a move that Beijing has previously denounced strongly.
The legislation is an updated version of a bill that the US House of Representatives approved in March. At the time, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin slammed the bill, saying that the move “puts the US on the opposite side of the principle of fair competition and international trade rules”.
He called the passage of the bill an attempt to “try every means to snatch from others all things that are good”.
After Congress allocated $8 billion in military support for Taiwan, Wang said stronger military collusion between the US and Taiwan region will not bring about security for the island or change the destiny of the doomed “Taiwan independence” forces.
“It will only increase tensions and the risk of conflict across the Taiwan Strait, and will ultimately be an act of shooting oneself in the foot,” Wang warned.
He urged Washington to stop arming Taiwan and stop undermining stability and peace across the Strait.
