Trump issues executive order against Tiktok and Wechat over China links
US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order promising a ban on Chinese-owned apps such as Tiktok and Wechat within 45 days.
The two apps must be removed from Apple and Google’s app stores and all business ceased with US companies by the deadline.
Tiktok owner Bytedance is currently in negotiations over a sale of its US operations with Microsoft, which the President has permitted to continue but ruled must conclude by 15 September.
Shares in Tencent, the Chinese media giant which owns Wechat, fell as much as 10 per cent overnight on the news.
The Trump administration this week said they would increase efforts to purge “untrusted” Chinese apps from US digital networks, labelling Wechat and Tiktok “significant threats”.
“We are reviewing the executive order to get a full understanding,” a Tencent spokesperson said.
“We are shocked by the recent executive order, which was issued without any due process,” Tiktok said in a statement, adding that it would “pursue all remedies available to us in order to ensure that the rule of law is not discarded”.
China firmly opposes the executive orders and will defend the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese businesses, a foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters today.
Trump said this week he would only support Microsoft’s efforts to buy Tiktok if the US Treasury got a “substantial portion” of the proceeds, despite there being no precedent for such an arrangement.
Meanwhile Wechat has a relatively small presence in the US, with only 19m downloads compared to Tiktok which has more than 2bn.
However its parent Tencent is Asia’s second most valuable company after Alibaba, with a market capitalisation of $686bn. It also holds stakes in a number of major US tech firms, including Fortnite creator Epic Games.
Trump said Wechat “automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users. This data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information”.
The administration yesterday also banned US government officials from having Tiktok or Wechat installed on their phones over security fears.