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US President Donald Trump signed a presidential decree on Thursday banning transactions with ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns the TikTok app, in 45 days.
The app can be used for disinformation campaigns that benefit the Chinese Communist Party and the United States “must take aggressive action against the owners of TikTok to protect our national security,” Trump said in the order.
On Monday, the President accepted the possibility that a US group would buy the platform that allows users to share short videos, but that must be done by September 15. Microsoft is in negotiations with ByteDance about an acquisition.
Trump announced last week that he would ban TikTok. He fears that ByteDance will pass on information about American citizens to the Chinese government via the popular app. The company itself has denied that.
Not only has ByteDance been banned, but the President has also issued a similar decree for Tencent, owner of the WeChat app.
Trump says that app “automatically captures massive amounts of information from its users.” According to him, this threatens the Chinese Communist Party to gain access to personal information of Americans.
