Trump and some Republican China hawks have focused attention on both companies over the summer, citing national security issues. TikTok, owned by ByteDance, is a wildly popular video app that says it has 100 million users in the US. WeChat, owned by Tencent, combines chat, e-commerce, games, and other services it’s a crucial app within China, and an estimated 19 million people use it in America to keep in touch with each other, and with people in China. But Trump’s announcement is meant to force Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores - which means the service would not be able to add new users - and to prevent TikTok from updating the app for existing users.īoth WeChat and TikTok are owned (for now) by Chinese companies, and both services have enormous footprints in the US. ![]() TikTok, meanwhile, would be allowed to keep operating in the US through November 12, so existing users of the app aren’t likely to be affected. The Trump administration says it will effectively shut down WeChat, the mobile chat/payment service popular with millions of Chinese Americans, on Sunday.Īnd the administration says it will do the same thing to TikTok, the mobile video service popular with tens of millions of Americans - but only after the November election.įriday’s news combines several different strands of politics, policy, and realpolitik: legitimate concerns about China’s ability to exert influence in the US via consumer technology American electoral politics and links between US tech executives and investors with the White House.īut the top line is straightforward: The Trump administration gets to say it is getting tough with China by moving to shut down one important Chinese-owned app in the US - while keeping another important Chinese-owned app, with ties to Trump supporters, running through the fall.Ĭommerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced the moves in a press release Friday morning, and then stated it more explicitly in an interview with Fox Business News: “For all practical purposes will be shut down in the US, but only in the US, as of midnight Monday.”
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