TikTok is facing another difficulty after President Donald Trump told reporters that he intends to ban TikTok from carrying out its operations in the US. Trump said to the reporters aboard the Air Force One on Friday night, “As far as TikTok is concerned, we’re banning them from the United States.’
According to reports, President Trump is ready to sign a document that will implement the ban as early as Saturday. He will either be utilizing an executive order or rely on emergency economic powers for the execution of this ban. Trump told the reporters, ‘I will sign the document tomorrow.’ There are high chances of the ban taking effect almost immediately.
This ban was expected, though, since Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has mentioned its possibility back on 7th July while stating that it was ‘something we’re looking at.’ For those of you who are not aware, TikTok is a subsidiary of ByteDance, which is based in Beijing. Rumors have been circulating about its privacy practices and its links to the Chinese government. Pompeo also related the app to ZTE and Huawei – Chinese companies that have been declared as threats to US national security.
Reports that surfaced on Friday hinted that the Trump administration might be forcing the Chinese owner to divest the app, which has millions of users. This lead to rumors about Microsoft acquiring TikTok’s US operations. However, Trump said, ‘[It’s] not the deal that you have been hearing about, that they are going to buy and sell, and this and that. And Microsoft and another one. We’re not an M&A company.’
On the other hand, the US General Manager for TikTok Vanessa Pappas said, ‘We’ve heard your outpouring of support. We’re not planning on going anywhere. The company will bring 10,000 jobs into the US over the next three years. We’re here for the long run.’
It remains to be seen how the Trump administration will implement a ban on TikTok in the US. Of course, there are a variety of ways, but we doubt that a network block would be used since there is no precedence of it in the US. That leads us to assume that the White House won’t be able to block TikTok right away using a network ban because legislature might be required for it. Let’s see what the future holds for the app users.
