US to ban TikTok and WeChat from all US App stores
TikTok and WeChat will be banned from US app stores unless President Donald Trump agrees to a last-minute deal. The Department of Commerce said it would bar people in the US from downloading the messaging and video-sharing apps through any app store on any platform.
The Trump administration says the companies threaten national security and could pass user data to China. But China and both companies deny this. TikTok said it was “disappointed” in the order and disagreed with the commerce department, saying it had already committed to “unprecedented levels of additional transparency” in light of the Trump administration’s concerns.
Tencent – the owner of WeChat – said the announced restrictions were “unfortunate”, but said they would continue talks with the US government “to achieve a long-term solution”. As far as TikTok is concerned, Trump said, “I have given the deal my blessing, I approve the deal in the concept”. As part of the deal rescuing TikTok, U.S. tech company Oracle is joining hands with Walmart to form a new entity called TikTok Global, which will be headquartered in the United States.
At the president’s direction, we have taken significant action to combat China’s malicious collection of American citizens’ personal data,” the US Department of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement.
A deal to prevent TikTok from Ban:
A deal to prevent TikTok from being banned in the US has been plunged into peril. Mr Trump told reporters on Friday he believed there could be a deal on TikTok “quickly”, adding that while the US needed “security from China”, TikTok was “an amazing company, very very popular”.” Maybe we can keep a lot of people happy but have the security that we need,” he said.
The Chinese company ByteDance had reached an agreement with Oracle and Walmart that was designed to ally national security concerns, but Global Times, a newspaper backed by the Chinese state, has suggested Beijing is unlikely to give its approval. But the newspaper’s editorial denounced a requirement that four of the five board seats of this company must be held by Americans, with only one reserved for a Chinese national.
“It is clear that these [terms] extensively show Washington’s bullying style and hooligan logic. They hurt China’s national security, interests and dignity,” the article warned. This isn’t the only threat to the TikTok deal, which requires approval from regulators in both Beijing and Washington.
