President Donald Trump issued an executive order Thursday barring U.S. companies from doing business with the Chinese company ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok.
The move would be a major blow to the popular short-form video app if it is not sold to a U.S. company. It is set to go into effect in 45 days.
The order says the risks posed by the platform are “real” and constitute a “national emergency.” The app has reportedly been downloaded 175 million times, capturing “vast swaths” of information that “threatens to allow” Chinese government officials to track Americans, according to the order.
After 45 days, the order says, the U.S. Commerce Department will be charged with identifying unspecified “transactions” that violate the ban. Microsoft, which is in talks to buy TikTok’s U.S. operations, said last week that it would complete those discussions by Sept. 15.
A spokesperson for Microsoft on Thursday night said the company had no comment on the president's executive order.
Cybersecurity experts have warned that China's laws allow its government to put pressure on tech companies like ByteDance to provide access to user data.
But experts have also noted that there is no evidence thus far of the company providing the Chinese government with data and pointed out that many other companies track their users.
"While TikTok is being singled out in this executive order, their data collection and sharing practices are fairly standard in the industry,” said Kirsten Martin, professor of technology ethics at the University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business.
“I would imagine every teenager will still access TikTok through the VPN they use to access other content. The Coronavirus is a national emergency. TikTok is not a national emergency," she said.
The president has been targeting TikTok since early July, when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. was "looking at" banning the app.
TikTok's meteoric rise in recent years coincided with growing tension between the U.S. and China over the growing influence of both countries' technology companies.
Trump on Thursday also issued a similar executive order targeting Tencent, one of the largest Chinese tech companies. While most of Tencent's business is in China, where it operates the popular WeChat app, it has numerous U.S. investments including ownership of Riot Games, which makes the popular "League of Legends" online game.
In May 2019, Trump issued a similar order on another major Chinese tech company, Huawei, which makes telecommunications equipment including 5G wireless infrastructure.
