Donald Trump issues executive orders banning US deals with WeChat, TikTok

The United States President Donald Trump on Thursday issued orders banning any US transactions with ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, and Tencent, owner of the WeChat app, starting in 45 days.

The development comes after the Donald Trump administration said this week that it was stepping up efforts to purge “untrusted” Chinese apps from US digital networks. Also, the US Administration had called the Chinese-owned TikTok app and messenger app WeChat as "significant threats."

The United States "must take aggressive action against the owners of TikTok to protect our national security," Trump said in the order.

 

He also said that WeChat "automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users. This data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans' personal and proprietary information."

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Donald Trump said that this week he would support the sale of TikTok's U.S. operations to Microsoft Corp. But it will take place if the US government got a “substantial portion” of the sales price. The US President also warned that he will ban the service in the United States on September 15.

-PTC News