TikTok Never Dies: Documentary Examines US-China Trade War Through Lens of App Ban
The film follows three creators who sued the Biden administration, revealing how national security fears and partisan politics overshadowed free speech concerns in the battle over ByteDance’s US operations.
Hao Wu’s documentary, TikTok Never Dies, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on Thursday, offering a chronicle of the six-year legal and political battle surrounding the potential ban of the app in the United States. The film follows three creators—Steven King, Chloe Sexton, and Topher Townsend—who joined a lawsuit against the Biden administration’s 2024 mandate requiring ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a ban. The narrative highlights the app’s shifting status from a Trump-era target to a bipartisan issue under Biden, and finally to a bargaining chip in US-China trade relations. Director Wu notes the film focuses on American anxieties regarding social media and national security rather than TikTok’s Chinese origins, as the company did not grant access. The documentary captures the app’s brief outage in 2025 and explores the complex political dynamics, including President Trump’s eventual support for a sale.
The documentary covers events from President Donald Trump’s initial threat to block TikTok in August 2020 through to the brokering of a sale of the app’s US operations in January 2026. Director Hao Wu selected the three protagonists to represent a diverse sample of the more than 200 million American users, including a hard-core Democrat, a rising Republican influencer, and a creator of non-political content. Wu, a former China tech industry worker, deliberately excluded detailed discussion of TikTok’s Chinese origins, stating the story is "more American than it is Chinese."
The documentary includes footage of the exact moment TikTok went dark in the US in 2025 to protest the imminent ban. Chloe Sexton, one of the protagonists, expresses a change of heart by the end of the film, questioning the value of the fight given the political motivations involved. Wu says that including Sexton’s change of heart was a deliberate choice to convey a warning to those championing social media regulation, noting that decisions are often motivated by money, power, or political concerns rather than pure principle.
In 2024, former President Joe Biden signed a law requiring ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a US ban. TikTok sued the government, and ByteDance recruited eight creators to join a parallel case. The issue evolved from a Trump-era target to a point of bipartisan consensus under Biden, before becoming a bargaining chip in US-China trade relations. The US government never proved in court that the app posed concrete harm; courts focused on balancing free speech with national security.
TikTok became a vehicle for American anxieties regarding social media, child safety, disinformation, and extremism. Director Wu’s previous film, People’s Republic of Desire, examined China’s livestreaming industry. The documentary captures the app’s brief outage in 2025 and explores the complex political dynamics, including President Trump’s eventual support for a sale. The film succeeds in making sense of the madness by focusing on how Americans argued with each other over the issue, rather than what TikTok did or did not do.
