Trump Signs Order Giving TikTok Parent Company Bytedance the Boot in 45 Days
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President Donald Trump on Thursday issued an executive order banning American companies from doing business with TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, within 45 days.
The order, in line with the administration’s rhetoric over the last several weeks, cited the video application’s practice of capturing “vast swaths of information from its users, including internet and other network activity … such as location data and browsing and search histories,” as well as its censorship of content China’s Communist Party “deems politically sensitive” and role in “disinformation campaigns” including the spread of “conspiracy theories” about the coronavirus.
The president also issued a second order banning American companies from doing business with Tencent, the Chinese parent company of messaging application WeChat. Both orders are set to take place on September 20, five days after a deadline Trump had set for a U.S. company to buy TikTok.
Microsoft has expressed interest in the application, but questions about how such a transaction would work have cast doubt on whether a deal will be successful. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) posed several of them in a letter to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on Wednesday, including whether Microsoft would rebuild the application to eliminate potentially risky code or retain employees from ByteDance to help administer the app.
“Let me be clear: Any resolution of the TikTok investigation that fails to sever all links between TikTok and potential proxies for the Chinese Communist Party, including but not limited to ByteDance, is unacceptable,” Hawley wrote.
Trump has also said he expects the U.S. Treasury to receive a cut of any cash Microsoft shells out for application, though the order did not speak to that issue. ByteDance has said it values the app at more than $50 billion.
“The United States must take aggressive action against the owners of TikTok to protect our national security,” the order added.
TikTok did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
