A TikTok ban is imminent: What are the financial stakes?

TikTok’s demise won’t dent the U.S. economy overall, but it is poised to crimp a sizable sub-economy that has sprung up around the hugely popular app used by roughly 170 million Americans. Putting a precise figure on TikTok’s impact across the U.S. economy is difficult, though the company has touted a figure of more than $20 billion a year.

Ella Livingston has a pretty clear idea of how it will affect her. She says a ban will cut off about $25,000 in monthly sales for Cocoa Asante, the artisan chocolate company she owns in Chattanooga, Tenn. She is anticipating having to lay off four to five part-time workers.

“It would be very, very painful," said Livingston, 31, a former high-school math teacher who credits TikTok for helping her startup rapidly grow in 2023 after an influencer posted a flattering review on the app about one of her company’s products, unprompted. “It went viral on a Friday night, and by Sunday I wrote my resignation letter."

A ban is expected to start Sunday after the Supreme Court upheld a federal law Friday that requires TikTok to separate from parent company ByteDance or else be banned. TikTok, girding for a possible loss, has been planning to shut down the app in the U.S. to comply with the law and avoid exposing companies that sell or distribute the app to legal liability.

Ella Livingston, center, owns an artisan chocolate company in Chattanooga, Tenn., that relies on TikTok for sales.

Proponents of a ban say any such impact is outweighed by the national security risks that the app could be used by China’s government to propagandize or spy on Americans—actions TikTok has said it wouldn’t allow.

The sale-or-ban bill passed with broad bipartisan support. President-elect Donald Trump has suggested he might try to save TikTok.

Biden administration officials have signaled they don’t intend to enforce the ban on his final day in office and that enforcement would fall to the Trump White House, but that hasn’t been enough to give TikTok comfort. TikTok late Friday publicly pressed the administration for more assurance that it won’t enforce the law, saying otherwise it will be forced to go dark. A White House official said: “We have already gone to extraordinary lengths to communicate our posture."

The most immediate effect of a ban would be on TikTok parent ByteDance and its employees and shareholders, which include major American backers such as BlackRock, General Atlantic and Susquehanna International Group. ByteDance, which also owns internet businesses in China, annual advertising revenue, according to one estimate, and has been helping to fuel demand for talent agents, video editors and others that support the work of the creators and small businesses on it.

A March 2024 report commissioned by TikTok and written by advisory firm Oxford Economics estimated that small businesses on TikTok contributed $24.2 billion to the U.S. economy in 2023—a figure that couldn’t be independently verified.

TikTok’s full impact includes not only the money that creators and small businesses make on it directly, but also indirect financial benefits in the form of increased website or retail-foot traffic, brand sponsorships, book deals and more.

Gift Oluwatoye earns money by posting videos on TikTok that show him playing and commenting on videogames.  

Many Americans will also lose a significant source of free entertainment, which is a form of economic value in itself, said Erik Brynjolfsson, head of Stanford University’s Digital Economy Lab. A study he led, which is based on how much money people said they would need to be paid to voluntarily forgo TikTok, estimated that American consumers got about $73 billion of value out of TikTok in 2023.

It is a different story for TikTok’s creators, who make money from sponsored posts, affiliate marketing, brand partnerships, donations and sales of goods through the TikTok Shop. TikTok also has a rewards program for creators that doles out payments based on factors such as the amount of time people spend watching their videos.

“If this goes, it means no income, I’m out of a job, and I have to look for a way to make money elsewhere," said 19-year-old Gift Oluwatoye of Prince George’s County, Md., who for the past year has been earning about $5,000 a month from posting videos to the app that show him playing and commenting on videogames.

The gross merchandise value for TikTok’s digital store in the U.S. last year was $9.7 billion, according to an internal presentation reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The U.S. has become TikTok’s biggest e-commerce market, surpassing Indonesia, the presentation showed.

Some creators haven’t prepared for TikTok to go away, citing the yearslong drama over its foreign ownership. Others say they have already diversified to other platforms such as YouTube or Instagram—or were on other platforms even before TikTok came to the U.S. in 2017—and that it hasn’t helped. They say such competitors lack the secret sauce that makes TikTok’s algorithm superior.

“What’s great about it is it pushes you out every single second to a new audience," said Oluwatoye, who has 265,000 followers on TikTok. “That’s how we’re able to grow so quickly, and that’s not found anywhere else."

Mississippi Candle Company, a small online business in Foley, Ala., has been on Instagram and Facebook for far longer than it has been on TikTok, yet it has tens of thousands more followers on the latter, said owner Jessica Simon, 34. About 95% of the web traffic it gets comes from TikTok alone, she added.

With four full-time employees including herself and her husband, plus four part-timers, Simon said losing TikTok would be devastating, especially because they built a 2,100-square-foot warehouse over the summer. She started the business making candles out of her kitchen but has since branched out into other products such as laundry detergent, all-purpose cleaners and car fresheners.

“We are panicking a little bit," she said. “I just hope our followers find us on the other platforms so I don’t have to lay anybody off."

Raffaele Huang and Catherine Lucey contributed to this article.

Write to Sarah E. Needleman at Sarah.Needleman@wsj.com and Georgia Wells at georgia.wells@wsj.com