Mr. Trump officially signed a ban on TikTok, WeChat

President Trump has materialized his threat to ban TikTok with his actions. Today, he signed an executive order banning TikTok, which comes into effect 45 days. The ordinance was based on the National Emergency Economic Power Act and the National Emergency Act.

President Trump signed an executive order banning TikTok.

“The spread of Chinese-owned and developed mobile applications in the US continues to threaten US national security, international policy, and the economy of the US,” the executive decree wrote. “At this point, action must be taken to address the threat of a particular application, TikTok”.

Appearing just hours after the US Senate voted to ban TikTok from all government devices, the executive decree stated that “any transaction of anyone” with ByteDance or its branch will be banned from 20 / 9. It is not clear how the decree will affect TikTok’s ability to function in the short term. Unlike Huawei and ZTE, the company does not need a license to operate and the decree does not mention requiring the Apple app market, Google to remove the app. However, it applies to both ByteDance affiliates – specifically TikTok in the US – and to all financial transactions to and from these branches.

TikTok, the short video application by ByteDance – a company based in China – has been downloaded more than 175 million times in the US and more than 1 billion times globally. The US denounces that TikTok automatically records large amounts of information from users such as location, browsing, and search history. “This data collection allows China to access exclusive and personal information about Americans, has the ability to help China track the location of employees, federal contractors, and build a personal information set. to blackmail and carry out corporate espionage ”, excerpted in the decree. The US also accused TikTok of censorship of content that China considers politically sensitive.

Mr. Trump emphasized that these risks are real. The Department of Homeland Security, the US Department of Traffic Safety and the Armed Forces have banned the use of TikTok on state-issued equipment. The Indian government also banned TikTok and other Chinese apps. In a statement, the Indian Ministry of Information Technology and Electronics said TikTok stole and transferred user data by an unapproved method to servers located outside of India. US companies also started banning TikTok on employee devices.

Previously, Mr. Trump threatened to ban TikTok if it could not sell to a US company before September 15. Microsoft is in talks to buy the app for about $ 30 billion.

Not long after announcing an executive order related to TikTok, Trump issued a similar order with WeChat, Tencent’s chat app. As for WeChat, the US will ban all financial transactions with Tencent. The decision also takes effect after 45 days.