US President Donald Trump signed a pair of executive orders that prohibit US residents from doing business with TikTok and WeChat. Both of these orders will take effect in 45 days.
“To protect our Nation, I took action to address the threat posed by one mobile application, TikTok. Further action is needed to address a similar threat posed by another mobile application, WeChat,” Trump said. He cites the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the National Emergencies Act and Section 201 of title 3 of the United States Code of the US laws on the executive order.
INBOX: @realDonaldTrump has signed an executive order to ban TikTok in 45 days. pic.twitter.com/1zR4HgCPVj
— Andrew Feinberg (@AndrewFeinberg) August 7, 2020
In the executive order, Trump claims that TikTok collects “vasts swaths of information from its users” like location data and search history. He also claims that the data claims threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party to track locations of Federal employees, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail and corporate espionage.
Trump also cites the fact that countries like India have recently banned the use of TikTok and the Chinese mobile apps citing similar concerns.
MORE: @realDonaldTrump has also signed a similar order banning transactions with WeChat. pic.twitter.com/Y4nVlCVBke
— Andrew Feinberg (@AndrewFeinberg) August 7, 2020
President Trump also cited similar reasons as to why he wants to ban the use of WeChat in the United States. WeChat is a very popular messaging service in China and Trump claims it has been either restricted or banned in countries like India or Australia.
Trump banning TikTok and WeChat is his latest big move against Beijing as the US seeks to curb China’s power in the tech industry. During the weekend, it was mentioned that Trump was in the process of banning TikTok in the US, which has become quite popular in the country with over 175 million installs. It became even weirder when companies like Microsoft have been consistently in the news this week being linked to buy the TikTok American business and even the entire global TikTok business.
The consequent banning of TikTok also comes after a time Instagram conveniently released Instagram Reels which is Facebook’s TikTok clone.
