The Trump administration announced on Friday that it will begin blocking business transactions in the United States with popular Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok and messaging app WeChat over the weekend.
The new Commerce Department rules bar TikTok and WeChat from appearing on U.S. app stores starting after midnight on Sunday, although users who have the apps will still be able to use them, albeit without the ability to download updates or security patches. A host of other severe restrictions against WeChat will also go into effect at that time and will greatly degrade the app’s functionality in the U.S., but TikTok will be given until Nov. 12 to work out a deal with U.S. companies and approved by the Treasury Department and President Trump.
The stringent limitations could be rescinded before being implemented depending on whether a deal addressing national security and data privacy concerns is reached.
“Today’s actions prove once again that President Trump will do everything in his power to guarantee our national security and protect Americans from the threats of the Chinese Communist Party,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement. “At the president’s direction, we have taken significant action to combat China’s malicious collection of American citizens’ personal data, while promoting our national values, democratic rules-based norms, and aggressive enforcement of U.S. laws and regulations.”
The announcement lays out two dates by which certain types of transactions will be banned, Sept. 20 and Nov. 12, with more limits affecting WeChat this weekend. The restrictions impacting both apps this weekend include the prohibition of “any provision of service to distribute or maintain the WeChat or TikTok mobile applications, constituent code, or application updates through an online mobile application store in the U.S.” Any services used “for the purpose of transferring funds or processing payments within the U.S.” through WeChat will also be banned this weekend.
Restrictions facing WeChat on Sunday and looming for TikTok in November also include prohibitions on enabling the functioning or optimization of the apps inside the U.S. through internet hosting services, content delivery network services, and internet transit or peering services, as well as bans on the “utilization of the mobile application’s constituent code, functions, or services in the functioning of software or services developed and/or accessible within the U.S.”
“Any other prohibitive transaction relating to WeChat or TikTok may be identified at a future date,” the Commerce Department said.
Earlier this month, TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance, rejected a purchase offer from Microsoft and Walmart, which had teamed up on a proposal. Instead, Oracle, a California-based multinational technology firm, agreed to become TikTok’s “trusted technology partner” in the U.S., but that falls short of the Trump administration’s push for the app’s U.S. operations to be owned by a U.S. company. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, headed by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, will conduct a national security review for any possible TikTok deal.
The Sunday deadline coincides with the conclusion of the 45-day window Trump set in his August executive order regarding ByteDance. The order said that “the spread in the United States of mobile applications developed and owned by companies in the People’s Republic of China,” such as TikTok, “continues to threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.”
ByteDance and TikTok have repeatedly claimed that they have not and would not turn over TikTok user data to the Chinese government, but national security experts have raised concerns about China’s 2017 national intelligence law, which requires all Chinese companies to assist Chinese intelligence services when asked — and to keep it secret. More than 100 million people in the U.S. use TikTok.
Senior officials with the Commerce Department explained to the Washington Examiner and other reporters in a press call on Friday that both WeChat and TikTok will be “de-platformed” in the U.S. on Sunday, meaning that as of midnight on Sunday, users will no longer be able to download TikTok or WeChat from mobile app stores such as the Apple Store or Google Play.
The officials said WeChat’s functionality will also begin to “degrade” on Sunday at midnight, but the other restrictions won’t go into effect on TikTok until Nov. 12, giving time for a possible deal to go through. The officials also denied that the mid-November TikTok date was purposely set for after the November election. The date was aligned with the end of the 90-day period detailed in Trump’s August executive order, they said, adding, “It has nothing to do with the election.”
The senior Commerce Department officials stressed that the availability and functionality of TikTok and WeChat will only be affected in the U.S. and said the goal isn’t to ban the use of the apps entirely, but rather to reduce some usage and thus reduce the national security threat.
They also argued these moves were being carried out to protect the “privacy of Americans and the national security of Americans” and noted that it is “well-documented” that the Chinese parent companies ByteDance and Tencent both work closely with Chinese state security services inside China. In addition, the officials denied that the new rules constituted a free speech violation, saying the bans were put together “with an important mandate to protect First Amendment rights.” The official said that the U.S. “doesn’t censor speech” and that “we’re banning these because they are used by the Chinese government to censor speech.”
Numerous U.S. government officials, including John Demers, the assistant attorney general of the National Security Division, have described that a national security threat is posed by TikTok, and the Pentagon, other government agencies, and a host of organizations have banned employees from using the app. TikTok has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration in federal court.
