Trump administration bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores beginning Sunday

Western companies and bankers are still wrangling with TikTok’s owner, the White House and Chinese authorities to try to arrange a sale of some of TikTok’s business. TikTok has seen explosive growth in the United States, where its users number in the tens of millions.

“Today’s actions prove once again that President 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. “At the President’s direction, 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 U.S. laws and regulations.”

After midnight as Sunday turns to Monday, anyone attempting to download TikTok or WeChat from the Apple or Google app stores in the U.S. won’t be able to do so, a senior Commerce official said Friday, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive deliberations. And anyone who already has the app on a phone won’t receive software updates or security patches, the official said.

The administration expects some users will find ways to continue using the apps, and it doesn’t intend to prosecute anyone for that, the official said. Its aim is to decrease use of the apps over time, the official said.

“We’re not going to haul some person using WeChat to communicate with persons overseas before a federal judge,” the official said.

On Sunday, the U.S. will also ban the provision of services that enable WeChat to be used for money transfers or mobile payments. That measure is likely to affect banks and other financial institutions that facilitate the payments.

And as of Sunday for WeChat, and Nov. 12 for TikTok, the U.S. will ban any provision of internet hosting services, or other network services, that allow the apps to function in the U.S.

And it will prohibit any U.S. use of the distinct computer code or functions that underpin both apps, to prevent the Chinese companies from re-introducing the apps under different names, a senior Commerce official said Friday, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive deliberations.

“The President has provided until November 12 for the national security concerns posed by TikTok to be resolved. If they are, the prohibitions in this order may be lifted,” Commerce said in its statement.

That proposal was under last minute review by the Treasury Department and President Trump Friday as the Sept. 20 ban deadline loomed.

In a statement Friday after the Commerce bans were announced, TikTok said it disagreed with the decision to block new app downloads starting Sunday.

“In our proposal to the U.S. Administration, we’ve already committed to unprecedented levels of additional transparency and accountability well beyond what other apps are willing to do, including third-party audits, verification of code security, and US government oversight of US data security,” the statement from spokesperson Hilary McQuaide said.

Officials at Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings, the owner of WeChat, said they were reviewing the decision.

“WeChat was designed to serve international users outside of mainland China and has always incorporated the highest standards of user privacy and data security,” Tencent said in a statement. The app’s name inside China is Weixin.

Tencent said it has “engaged in extensive discussions with the U.S. government, and have put forward a comprehensive proposal to address its concerns.”

“The restrictions announced today are unfortunate, but given our desire to provide ongoing services to our users in the U.S. — for whom WeChat is an important communication tool — we will continue to discuss with the government and other stakeholders in the U.S. ways to achieve a long-term solution,” Tencent said.

Google and Apple, which operate the most widely used app stores, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has been lobbying hard for a deal in which TikTok outsources data management to Oracle while allowing TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to retain some ownership, according to people familiar with the talks who were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

But the plan has faced opposition among some officials and lawmakers, who believe it doesn’t fully address national security concerns. It also falls far short of what the president originally signaled he wanted.

With the Commerce order, “the value of TikTok is going to diminish every day,” said Richard Sofield, former director of the Justice Department’s foreign investment review section and now a partner at Wiley Rein.

“It is now a distressed asset,” he said. "ByteDance is trying to prevent it from being a total fire sale where they’d only get pennies on the dollar.”

The American Civil Liberties Union denounced the Commerce Department action as a violation of the apps’ users’ First Amendment rights “by restricting their ability to communicate and conduct important transactions on the two social media platforms.”

“The order also harms the privacy and security of millions of existing TikTok and WeChat users in the United States by blocking software updates, which can fix vulnerabilities and make the apps more secure,” Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, said in a statement. "In implementing President Trump’s abuse of emergency powers, Secretary Ross is undermining our rights and our security. To truly address privacy concerns raised by social media platforms, Congress should enact comprehensive surveillance reform and strong consumer data privacy legislation.”

Current and former administration officials said they could recall no precedent for the U.S. banning apps on this scale. China has long prohibited its citizens from using most Western social-media apps, including Facebook, YouTube, Google and Twitter.

TikTok has about 100 million users in the U.S. on a quarterly basis. WeChat had about 3.3 million monthly active users in the U.S. as of August, according to analytics provider App Annie. SensorTower, another analytics firm, said the WeChat app has been installed by nearly 22 million App Store and Google Play users in the U.S. since January 2014.

WeChat has been described as the Swiss army knife of apps, allowing users to pay bills, order food, book travel, read news and shop online. It’s also a big conduit for Chinese speakers in the United States to communicate with relatives and friends in China.

Chinese authorities have used WeChat to monitor political dissidents and other critics, some of whom have been detained by police or sentenced to prison for their posts on the platform.

Trump put TikTok and WeChat on notice on August 6, when he released a pair of executive orders prohibiting U.S. individuals or companies from carrying out transactions with the apps as of September 20. The orders called both apps a threat to national security, in part by collecting “vast swaths” of user data that Trump said the Chinese Communist Party could tap for nefarious purposes.

The WeChat order said the app allows “the Chinese Communist Party a mechanism for keeping tabs on Chinese citizens who may be enjoying the benefits of a free society for the first time in their lives.”

“WeChat, like TikTok, also reportedly censors content that the Chinese Communist Party deems politically sensitive and may also be used for disinformation campaigns that benefit the Chinese Communist Party,” the order said.

WeChat is one of Tencent’s best known products, but the tech giant is also the world’s largest online gaming company, a provider of cloud-computing services, and a big distributor of movies and music.

Tencent has an array of business dealings with Western companies, including through licensing entertainment content, and is one of China’s biggest companies, with a market value of $640 billion on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Earlier this year, Tencent led a consortium that bought 10 percent of Universal Music Group, home of Justin Bieber, Katy Perry and Luciano Pavarotti.