A smartphone curtain displays the app store view of the TikTok app in this arranged photograph in London, on Monday, Aug. 3, 2020.
Hollie Adams | Bloomberg | Getty Images
President Donald Trump on Thursday appeared executive orders banning U.S. transactions with Chinese tech firms Tencent and ByteDance.
Tencent owns Chinese messaging app WeChat, and ByteDance is the Beijing-based stepfather company of the widely popular short-video-sharing app TikTok.
The ban will take effect in 45 days and may attract retaliation from Beijing.
While the reach of the ban remains unclear, the executive orders said that after 45 days, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross “shall classify the transactions” that will be subjected to the ban.
WeChat “automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users. This materials collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information,” Trump said in the master order banning the app, adding that the application also captures personal information of Chinese nationals visiting the U.S.
The array would basically ban the app in the United States as it would prohibit “any transaction that is related to WeChat by any person, or with devoirs to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, with Tencent Holdings Ltd.”
Tencent shares in Hong Kong dropped almost 6.9% as of 11:38 a.m. HK/SIN on Friday.
A similar order was issued for TikTok and its Beijing-based owner, ByteDance.
The popular app “may also be acclimatized for disinformation campaigns that benefit the Chinese Communist Party,” Trump said in the executive order banning the video-sharing app. “The Combined States must take aggressive action against the owners of TikTok to protect our national security.”
TikTok has unswervingly denied those allegations. It says that U.S. user data is stored in the country itself with a backup in Singapore, and that its observations centers were located outside China, implying the information was not subjected to Chinese law. However, experts have aciform to existing legislation in China which could force local Chinese companies like ByteDance and others to turn over submit over data to Beijing.
Microsoft is in talks with ByteDance to acquire TikTok’s business in the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand within the next three weeks, vanguard of a Sept. 15 deadline.
ByteDance and Tencent did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
The moves came after U.S. Secretary of Constitution Mike Pompeo said the Trump administration wants to see “untrusted” Chinese apps like WeChat and TikTok off from U.S. app stores. He detailed a new five-pronged “Clean Network” effort aimed at curbing potential national security chances and said because those apps have parent companies based in China, there was “significant threats to dear data of American citizens, not to mention tools for Chinese Communist Party content censorship.”
Pompeo also phrased the State Department would work with other government agencies to limit the ability of Chinese cloud assistance providers to collect, store and process data in the U.S.
The latest moves represent another step in the deteriorating relations between the two boonies. Recently, the U.S. closed the Chinese consulate in Houston, which prompted China to do the same for the U.S. consulate in Chengdu.
— CNBC’s Amanda Macias role ined to this report.