President Donald Trump on Friday signed an executive order giving China-based ByteDance 90 days to sell its TikTok business in the United States, citing evidence of possible national security threats.
In the order, the Trump administration claimed there is “credible evidence” to suggest ByteDance “might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States.”
“There is credible evidence that leads me to believe that ByteDance Ltd., an exempted company with limited liability incorporated under the laws of the Cayman Islands (“ByteDance”), through acquiring all interests in musical.ly, an exempted company with limited liability incorporated under the laws of the Cayman Islands (“Musical.ly”), might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States. As a result of the acquisition, ByteDance merged its TikTok application with Musical.ly’s social media application and created a single integrated social media application”
ByteDance will also be required to destroy all US user data within the 90-day window and will be required to certify in writing that the data has been deleted.
For TikTok to avoid the ban, it will need to sell its US business to an American company. Microsoft and Twitter have both expressed interest in purchasing the service.
It was recently reported that TikTok plans to sue the Trump administration and challenge the President’s previous executive order that would ban the video-sharing app from the United States.
