UK businesses to suffer if TikTok banned in the US

Jenny Bailey from Merseyside runs Calla Shoes, a footwear brand that specialises in shoes for women with bunions.

She said whenever she sees a big surge in traffic from TikTok, a lot of those customers are from the US.

“We’ve managed to grow our US revenue from around 20% to 50% of our total business,” she said.

If TikTok does end up being banned in the US she believes “the opportunity to grow organically as quickly as we have would be severely affected”.

Other social media apps that Jenny uses just don’t have the same impact, she said.

“We know what works on TikTok can sometimes work quite well on Instagram, but we don’t get those big spikes in traffic from the USA on Instagram that we see on TikTok.”

It could take several years before the app is blocked as legal action, likely all the way to the Supreme Court, would delay the process.