{"id":816,"date":"2020-08-07T14:00:21","date_gmt":"2020-08-07T14:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businessner.com\/?p=816"},"modified":"2020-08-07T10:36:14","modified_gmt":"2020-08-07T10:36:14","slug":"trump-issues-executive-orders-banning-tiktok-and-wechat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businessner.com\/trump-issues-executive-orders-banning-tiktok-and-wechat\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Issues Executive Orders Banning TikTok and WeChat"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump on Thursday (August 6) issued separate executive orders to ban transactions with popular Chinese-owned apps TikTok and We Chat in the United States.<\/p>\n

Trump has been threatening a ban on the two popular Chinese-owned apps owned by their parent companies ByteDance and Tencent since last month.<\/p>\n

The ban will prohibit U.S. businesses from making transactions with ByteDance and Tencent and will take effect in 45 days.<\/p>\n

While it is unclear at this point how the executive order will affect ByteDance and Tencent’s operations in the U.S., this latest White House action could potentially worsen the ongoing trade war between the United States and China.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday (August 5), U.S.Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also announced<\/a> the expansion of its Clean Network program which seeks restrictions for Chinese-owned businesses particularly phone makers to pre-install U.S. Apps like Google and Facebook.<\/p>\n

Similar to what happened to Huawei when it lost access to some Google services, the Clean Network program could affect other Chinese phone makers like Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Trump said the increasing number of\u00a0 TikTok and WeChat users is a cause for concern as it \u201ccontinues to threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

The U.S. President cited the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the National Emergencies Act as among the laws that grant authority for him to issue both orders.<\/p>\n

What does Trump\u2019s TikTok executive order say?<\/h2>\n

Popular short video format app TikTok, with 800 million users worldwide, has seen increased users from the U.S. with over 100 million users.<\/p>\n

TikTok, owned by Chinese developer ByteDance, has also been downloaded 175 million times in the U.S.<\/p>\n

Through the app, Trump says TikTok captures \u201cvast swaths of information\u201d that includes Internet and other network activity information such as location data, browsing, and search histories.<\/p>\n

\"Tiktok-Microsoft\"
Tiktok users in the United States have grown to over 100 million in recent months.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

According to Trump, the data collected from Americans can be accessed by the Chinese Communist Party thereby gaining access to personal and proprietary information.<\/p>\n

The executive order<\/a> also stated that by having this access, TikTok could \u201cpotentially allow China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.\u201d<\/p>\n

The order also accused TikTok of censoring content that Beijing deems politically sensitive.<\/p>\n

Some of this content pertains to protests in Hong Kong against the Beijing-sponsored national security law and China\u2019s treatment of Uyghur minorities in Xinjiang province.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThis mobile application may also be used for disinformation campaigns that benefit the Chinese Communist Party, such as when TikTok videos spread debunked conspiracy theories about the origins of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus.,\u201d Trump said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The president further said that \u201cthese risks are real\u201d mentioning that the Homeland Security department, Transportation Security Administration, and the United States Armed Forces have already banned the use of TikTok on Federal Government phones.<\/p>\n

He also cited the recent banning of TikTok by the government of India accusing the app of stealing and transmitting user\u2019s data in an unauthorized manner to servers outside the country.<\/p>\n

What does Trump\u2019s order in banning of WeChat say?<\/h2>\n

Like TikTok, Trump says WeChat also automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans\u2019 personal and proprietary information,\u201d the order said.<\/p>\n

Mobile messaging app WeChat now has an estimated 1.15 billion users worldwide with 90 percent of its users in China.<\/p>\n

However, some users of the popular messaging and electronic payment application owned by the Chinese company Tencent Holdings Ltd. are also located in the U.S.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Chinese tech giant Tencent owns popular messaging and electronic payment app WeChat which has over 1 billion users, mostly from China. Image Source: Tencent<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Trump, in the executive order<\/a>, said WeChat also captures personal and proprietary information of Chinese nationals visiting the U.S. which allows Beijing to keep tabs on Chinese citizens.<\/p>\n

The U.S. President, as an example, cited that in March 2019, a researcher reportedly discovered a Chinese database containing billions of WeChat messages sent from users in not only China but also the United States, Taiwan, South Korea, and Australia.<\/p>\n

Citing the same issues he had with TikTok, Trump said WeChat also censors content that the Chinese Communist Party deems politically sensitive. It may also be used for disinformation campaigns that benefit the Chinese Communist Party.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThese risks have led other countries, including Australia and India, to begin restricting or banning the use of WeChat.\u00a0 The United States must take aggressive action against the owner of WeChat to protect our national security.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

ByteDance and Tencent have yet to issue statements on the latest executive order from Trump.<\/p>\n

ByteDance, TikTok\u2019s owner, in the meantime is still in the middle of discussions with tech giant Microsoft<\/a> for the latter to acquire its U.S. assets.<\/p>\n

Microsoft said in a blog post<\/a> last week that it will have discussions on the potential purchase of the popular app TikTok until September 15.<\/p>\n

With these latest actions from Trump against the Chinese-owned apps, it will also be just a matter of time before Beijing also issues retaliatory actions in the ongoing US-China trade war.<\/p>\n


\n

Read More: Gold Prices Surge to $2000 per ounce: Is It Time To Invest?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump on Thursday (August 6) issued separate executive orders to ban transactions with popular Chinese-owned apps TikTok and We Chat in the United States. Trump has been threatening a ban on the two popular Chinese-owned apps owned by their parent companies ByteDance and Tencent since last month. The ban will prohibit U.S. businesses […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":817,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"Trump issues executive orders to ban TikTok and WeChat, exacerbating US-China trade war","_seopress_titles_desc":"U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday (August 6) issued separate executive orders to ban popular Chinese apps TikTok and We Chat.","_seopress_robots_index":"","tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[214,190,201,213,163,216,215,217],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businessner.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businessner.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businessner.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businessner.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businessner.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=816"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businessner.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":873,"href":"https:\/\/businessner.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816\/revisions\/873"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businessner.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businessner.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businessner.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businessner.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}