Expect more US actions on Tiktok, WeChat: White House aide
KATHMANDU: US President Donald Trump is likely to take more stringent action against Chinese-owned social media apps TikTok and WeChat, White House adviser Peter Navarro was quoted as saying on Bloomberg.
Navarro during a programme on Fox News, on Sunday, said the Trump administration is "just getting started" with the two apps and there is a high chance of them being banned in the US while not specifying the exact actions that the administration might take.
He further claimed that the app being sold to American buyers is not likely to solve the problem. “If TikTok separates as an American company, that doesn’t help us,” Navarro said. “Because it’s going to be worse -- we’re going to have to give China billions of dollars for the privilege of having TikTok operate on US soil.”
Earlier, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had said that the United States is looking at banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok.
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Meanwhile, Amazon backtracks the decision to ban Amazon employees for using TikTok. It had sent an internal email on Friday to all employees telling them to delete the popular video app from their phones.
Read Also: Amazon says email to employees banning TikTok was a mistake
The email had cited the app’s “security risks" as the reason for the ban. However, Navarro alleged that Amazon's move to backtrack from its decision was the “power of the Chinese Communist Party on corporate America.”
TikTok, a short-form video app owned by China-based ByteDance, was also recently banned in India along with 58 other Chinese apps following a border clash between India and China in which 20 Indian soldiers were killed.
Read Also: India bans Chinese apps including, you guessed it right- TikTok!