WASHINGTON • The Trump administration will ban video-sharing app TikTok and WeChat from US app stores starting tomorrow night, a move that will block Americans from downloading the Chinese-owned platforms over concerns that they pose a national security threat.
"Today's actions prove once again that President Donald 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.
"The Chinese Communist Party has demonstrated the means and motives to use these apps to threaten the national security, foreign policy and the economy of the US," he added.
Current TikTok users will see little change tomorrow and US Commerce Department officials said they will not bar additional technical transactions for TikTok until Nov 12, which gives the firm time to see if owner ByteDance can clinch an agreement over the fate of its US operations.
The ban on new US downloads of the widely popular app could still be rescinded by President Trump before it takes effect.
ByteDance has been in talks with Oracle Corp and others to create a new company, TikTok Global, that aims to address US concerns about the security of its users' data.
ByteDance still needs Mr Trump's approval to stave off a US ban.
The Commerce Department order bars Apple's app store, Alphabet's Google Play and others from offering the apps on any platform "that can be reached from within the United States", a senior Commerce Department official said.
The department said the actions will "protect users in the US by eliminating access to these applications and significantly reducing their functionality".
The order will not ban US companies from doing businesses on WeChat outside the United States, which will be welcome news to US firms such as Walmart and Starbucks that use WeChat's embedded "mini-app" programmes to facilitate transactions and engage consumers in China, officials said.
The order will also not bar transactions with WeChat owner Tencent Holdings' other businesses, including its online gaming operations, and will not prohibit Apple, Google or others from offering TikTok or WeChat apps anywhere outside the US.
The bans are in response to a pair of executive orders issued by Mr Trump on Aug 6 that gave the Commerce Department 45 days to determine what transactions to block from the apps that he deemed a national security threat.
That deadline expires tomorrow.
Commerce Department officials said they were taking the extraordinary step because of the risks the apps' data collection poses.
China and the companies have denied that US user data is collected for spying.
Mr Ross said in his statement: "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 US laws and regulations."
The Trump administration has ramped up efforts to purge "untrusted" Chinese apps from US digital networks and has called TikTok and WeChat "significant threats".
TikTok has 100 million users in the US and is especially popular among younger Americans.
WeChat has had an average of 19 million daily active users in the US, analytics firms Apptopia said early last month.
It is popular among Chinese students, expatriates and some Americans who have personal or business relationships in China.
The Commerce Department will not seek to compel people in the US to remove the apps or stop using them, but will not allow updates or new downloads.
"We are aiming at a top corporate level. We're not going to go out after the individual users," one Commerce Department official said.
Over time, officials said, the lack of updates will degrade the apps usability.
"The expectation is that people will find alternative ways to do these actions," a senior official said.
The Commerce Department is also barring additional technical transactions with WeChat starting tomorrow that will significantly reduce the usability and functionality of the app in the US.
There may be sporadic outages as well, the official said.
REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, NYTIMES
