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WASHINGTON: The Trump administration to ban WeChat and the video-sharing app TikTok from US app stores starting Sunday night, a move that will prevent Americans from downloading Chinese-owned platforms over concerns they pose a threat to the National security.
The bans, announced on Friday, affect only new downloads and updates and are less radical than expected, particularly for TikTok, giving its parent group ByteDance some breathing space to close a deal on the fate of its US operations. USA
WeChat, an all-in-one e-payment, social media and messaging app, faces tougher restrictions since Sunday. Existing TikTok users, on the other hand, will see little change until November 12, when a ban on some technical transactions will take effect, which TikTok said would amount to an effective ban. For a question and answer session on the real impact, click
“We do not agree with the decision of the Department of Commerce and we are disappointed that it could block downloads of new applications from Sunday and prohibit the use of the TikTok application in the United States as of November 12,” the company said a statement. “We will continue to challenge the unjust executive order.”
China’s Commerce Ministry voiced its “determined opposition” and urged the United States to stop its harassment and crimes.
“If the US side stubbornly sticks to its course, China will take the necessary steps to resolutely safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies,” he said, without elaborating.
Trump did not indicate on Friday whether he would endorse a TikTok deal. He said a deal “could go fast.”
“We have great options and maybe we can keep a lot of people happy,” Trump told reporters. “We have to have the total security of China.”
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told Fox Business Network that “the basic TikTok will remain intact until November 12.”
President Donald Trump could still rescind the ban on new US downloads of the popular app before it goes into effect if ByteDance seals a deal with Oracle that addresses concerns about user data security.
“This is the right move: increase pressure on Beijing, protect Americans,” Republican Senator Josh Hawley said on Twitter.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has promised to review the security risks surrounding TikTok if he defeats Trump in the Nov.3 election.
“I think it is of genuine concern that TikTok, a Chinese operation, has access to more than 100 million young people, particularly in the United States of America,” Biden told reporters at a campaign stop in Minnesota.
The Trump administration has stepped up its efforts to purge “untrustworthy” Chinese applications from American digital networks amid mounting tensions with Beijing on a variety of issues, from trade and human rights to the battle for technological supremacy.
The WeChat ban, used by more than 1 billion people around the world, prohibits the transfer of funds or the processing of payments to or from people in the United States through it. Users could also start to experience significantly slower service or sporadic outages starting Sunday night.
WeChat developer Tencent Holdings called the order “unfortunate” but said it will “continue to discuss with the government and other stakeholders about ways for the United States to achieve a long-term solution.”
The Commerce Department order prohibits Apple Inc’s app store, Alphabet Inc’s Google Play and others from offering the apps on any platform “that can be accessed from within the United States,” a senior official from the United States told Reuters. Commerce.
While the bans are less dramatic than some feared, the Commerce Department said it could issue additional orders if it discovers “that illicit WeChat or TikTok behavior is being replicated by another app in some way outside the scope of these executive orders. “.
Shares of Oracle closed 0.3% lower after initially falling 1.6% in pre-market trading.
The American Civil Liberties Union said the Commerce order “violates the First Amendment rights of people in the United States by restricting their ability to communicate and conduct important transactions on the two social media platforms.”
The order does not prohibit US companies from doing business on WeChat outside of the US, which will be good news for US companies such as Walmart and Starbucks that use WeChat’s built-in ‘mini-app’ programs to facilitate transactions and involve consumers in China, officials. said.
The order will not prohibit transactions with WeChat owner Tencent’s other businesses, including its online gaming operations, and will not prohibit Apple, Google, or others from offering TikTok or WeChat applications anywhere outside of the United States.
On Friday, a U.S. judge in California refused to block the Commerce Department’s WeChat order, but set a new hearing for Saturday at 4:30 p.m. EDT to decide whether to issue an emergency order blocking Commerce’s order in a lawsuit filed by WeChat users.
The bans are in response to a pair of executive orders issued by Trump on Aug. 6 that gave the Commerce Department 45 days to determine which transactions to block from apps it believes pose a threat to national security. That deadline expires on Sunday.
Commerce Department officials said they were taking an extraordinary step due to the risks posed by collecting data from apps. China and the companies have denied collecting data from US users for spying.
Apple and Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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TikTok has 100 million users in the United States and is especially popular with younger Americans.
Many TikTok users in the US did not express alarm at the new restrictions. “He’s like the boy who cried wolf,” said Carter Kench, a 17-year-old from Atlanta, Georgia, with 2.4 million followers.
WeChat has averaged 19 million daily active users in the United States, analytics firms Apptopia said in early August. It is popular with Chinese students, expats, and some Americans who have personal or business relationships in China.
The Department of Commerce will not seek to force people in the United States to delete the apps or stop using them. “We are targeting a higher corporate level. We are not going to go after individual users,” a Commerce official said.
Over time, officials said, the lack of updates will degrade the usability of the apps.
“The expectation is that people will find alternative ways to carry out these actions,” said a senior official. “We hope the market will act and there will be more secure applications that will fill these gaps that Americans can trust and that the US government will not have to take similar action on.”
The trade is also banning services for WeChat that will significantly reduce the usability and functionality of the application in the United States and stop hosting data within the United States, content delivery services and networks that can increase functionality. .
Commerce will ban the same set of technical transactions for TikTok, but that won’t go into effect until November 12.
(Information from David Shepardson, Echo Wang, and Alexandra Alper; additional information from Pe Le, Sheila Dang, Karen Freifeld, and Jarrett Renshaw, and the Beijing newsroom; editing by Chris Sanders, Carmel Crimmins, Andrea Ricci, and Daniel Wallis)
