US1 min(s) read
Published 12:17 18 Sep 2020 GMT
The Trump Administration has announced that it will ban US business transactions with Chinese-owned social apps TikTok and WeChat on Sunday.
As reported by CNBC, on Friday (September 18), Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement:
"At the President’s direction, we have taken significant action to combat China’s malicious collection of American citizens’ personal data, while promoting our national values, democratic rules-based norms, and aggressive enforcement of U.S. laws and regulations."
The Commerce Department added that starting September 20, US companies would be banned from distributing WeChat and TikTok.
Per Reuters, this decision means that, starting from Sunday, Americans will no longer be able to download TikTok and WeChat as the apps will be banned from US app stores - such as the Apple Store and the Google Play Store.
The department added that these actions serve to "protect users in the US by eliminating access to these applications and significantly reducing their functionality."
TikTok owners ByteDance are now in a race to clinch an agreement prior to Sunday.
Reuters states that ByteDance has been in talks with Oracle Corp ORCL.N and others to create a new company by the name of TikTok Global, which it states will address and amend any concerns US officials have surrounding the security of its users' data.
However, ByteDance still needs to seek President Trump's approval in order to stave off a nationwide ban in the US.
Last month, Trump announced plans to ban TikTok
while aboard Air Force One as he returned to Washington following a fundraising trip to Florida. He said:
"As far as TikTok is concerned we’re banning them from the United States."
TikTok is a video-sharing social media service owned by the Beijing-based internet technology company ByteDance.
ByteDance launched TikTok back in 2017, and after purchasing Musical.ly - a video service popular with teens in the US and Europe - and combined the two.
The platform currently has roughly 800 million active users worldwide, and allows its users to create short dance, lip-sync, comedy, or talent videos, as well as simply sharing moments of their day-to-day lives.
In addition, WeChat is a popular marketing and sales tool used by many US companies in China and around the world.
Due to the fact that US social media apps like Facebook and Instagram are banned in China, WeChat has become an essential application people use for social network and e-commerce.
The US has long accused China of stealing the intellectual property of US citizens, costing the economy billions of dollars and thousands of residents their jobs. Beijing has strongly denied these accusations.
