TikTok's future in the US market is hanging in the balance, with the US Senate having pushed through a bill set to force TikTok's Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell the sort-form video app or face a ban.

79 senators voted in favour and 18 against the legislation, which will give ByteDance one year to divest of its TikTok assets in the US before the app is deleted from US app stores.

The bill passed the US House of Representatives on Saturday by a margin of 360 to 58, and will now be up to president Joe Biden to sign off on. The legislation responds to concerns from US lawmakers over whether the Chinese government can access TikTok's data - which TikTok denies. 

TikTok's head of public policy for the America's, Michael Beckerman, has indicated that the app intends to fight any ban or forced sale, describing the bill as unconstitutional.

“At the stage that the bill is signed, we will move to the courts for a legal challenge,” he said in a memo sent to staff. "We’ll continue to fight, as this legislation is a clear violation of the first amendment rights of the 170 million Americans on TikTok."

Last year Australia's Select Committee on Foreign Interference through Social Media recommended the government consider forcing ByteDance to divest of TikTok locally if the US does the same.

TikTok Australia's General Manager of Global Business Solutions, Brett Armstrong, has issued a statement in relation to the latest developments:

"TikTok is a platform that is loved by over 8.5 million Australians and 350,000 Australian businesses, with a recent independent study by Oxford Economics finding that we contribute $1.1b and 13,000 jobs to the Australian economy. There is zero evidence suggesting that TikTok is in any way a national security risk, and we welcome the Prime Minister's recent comments that his Government has no plans to ban us."