TikTok to challenge Donald Trump ban order

TikTok plans to challenge Donald Trump’s executive order that would ban the popular app from the US if it doesn’t find an American buyer.

TikTok’s new office space at the C3 campus in Culver City, in the westside of Los Angeles. Picture: AFP

TikTok plans to challenge President Donald Trump’s executive order that would ban the popular short-video app from the US if it doesn’t quickly find an American buyer, setting up a showdown with the government.

The company on Saturday said it was preparing to file a lawsuit in the coming week. TikTok is expected to claim that the Trump administration failed to follow due process when it issued on August 6 an executive order that set in motion a 45-day period for TikTok to find a buyer for its US operations.

The order would bar people in the US from transactions with ByteDance Ltd, the China-based owner of TikTok. A subsequent presidential order provided a 90-day deadline for the transaction to be completed.

Mr Trump argued that TikTok posed an economic and national security threat to the US. US officials have expressed concern that China’s authoritarian government would have access to the data TikTok collects from users, including Americans. TikTok has said it would never hand over such data. It has about 100 million users in the US.

Microsoft has said it is in talks to buy TikTok’s US operations, and at least two other groups are considering a bid, including Twitter and Oracle.

When Mr Trump first issued the executive order, he also signed one targeting popular Chinese app WeChat, owned by Tencent Holdings. A WeChat users group that says it isn’t affiliated with the app’s owner filed a lawsuit in US District Court in San Francisco against the Trump administration on Friday, seeking to block the president’s order to bar transactions with WeChat.

The Wall Street Journal