The Phnom Penh Post

TikTok plans to sue over Trump’s siege on popular video app

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VIDEO app TikTok on Saturday said it will challenge in court a Trump administra­tion crackdown on the popular Chinese-owned platform, which Washington accuses of being a national security threat.

As tensions soar between the world’s two biggest economies, President Donald Trump signed an executive order on August 6 giving Americans 45 days to stop doing business with TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance Ltd – effectivel­y setting a deadline for a potential pressured sale of the app to a US company.

TikTok said in a statement: “To ensure that the rule of law is not discarded and that our company and users are treated fairly, we have no choice but to challenge the executive order through the judicial system.

“Even though we strongly disagree with the administra­tion’s concerns, for nearly a year we have sought to engage in good faith to provide a constructi­ve solution.

“What we encountere­d instead was a lack of due process as the administra­tion paid no attention to facts and t ried to insert itself into negotiatio­ns between private businesses.”

ByteDance said in a separate statement that the suit would be filed on Monday, US time.

TikTok’s kaleidosco­pic feeds of short clips feature everything from dance routines and hair-dye tutorials to jokes about daily life and politics. It has been downloaded 175 million times in the US and more than a billion times around the world.

Trump claims TikTok could be used by China to track the locations of federal employees, build dossiers on people for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.

The company has said it has never provided any US user data to the Chinese government, and Beijing has blasted Trump’s crackdown as political.

The US measures come ahead of November 3 elections in which Trump, behind his rival Joe Biden in the polls, is campaignin­g hard on an increasing­ly strident antiBeijin­g message.

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