President Joe Biden on Wednesday dropped executive orders meant to ban TikTok and other Chinese-owned apps that were issued by former President Donald Trump.
Instead, Biden’s Commerce Department will conduct its own review of the apps to evaluate whether they are credible foreign threats “and take action, as appropriate,” according to a White House fact sheet.
The Commerce Department will be asked to evaluate smartphone apps “involving software applications that are designed, developed, manufactured, or supplied by persons that are owned or controlled by, or subject to the jurisdiction of a foreign adversary, including the People’s Republic of China, that may present an undue or unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States and the American people,” according to the fact sheet.
Biden’s new order provides guidelines for identifying apps that could pose a significant risk to national security and consumer data privacy, such as apps that are controlled by people who support a foreign adversary military or are involved in the collection of sensitive personal data.
CHINESE OWNERS OF TIKTOK PUT OUT ANOTHER POPULAR APP THAT COULD CREATE CONCERNS
TikTok came into the spotlight when Trump tried to ban the app, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, and pushed the parent company to sell the app, which it is attempting to do.
The U.S. government sees ByteDance as a data privacy and national security risk because of the Chinese government’s access to all data collected by technology companies in China.
A federal court injunction had blocked Trump’s order meant to ban TikTok and another Chinese social media app called WeChat.
However, a Senate bill led by GOP Sen. Josh Hawley from Missouri to ban TikTok from government devices has gained traction in Congress.
It was included in Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, a legislative package intended to help the U.S. out-compete China, that passed the Senate on Tuesday.
Last week, Biden continued and expanded a Trump-era ban on the U.S. investing in Chinese companies suspected to have links to the Chinese military. Many of these blacklisted entities are subsidiaries or are connected to Chinese state-owned firms.
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Biden is also on his first overseas trip as president this week, meeting European and NATO leaders, in part to find common ground with others interested in holding China more accountable.
