Biden puts off Trump attempts to ban TikTok, WeChat; orders new review

• Financial

Ahead of a Geneva Summit later this month, the US President Joe Biden on Wednesday had dropped a deluge of Trump-era executive orders including a ban on new downloads of WeChat and TikTok in the United States and ordered a new Commerce Department review on whether a purulent practice of those apps could pose potential national security concerns, suggesting a temporary de-escalation in US-China trade row ahead of a likely Biden-Jinping meet on the sidelines of Geneva Summit.

In point of fact, an era of former Republican President Donald Trump, much of which had witnessed a protracted trade war with China that toiled trillions of dollars and roiled money markets across the globe, had attempted to bar American users to download and to make technical transactions on Chinese-owned WeChat and TikTok citing national security concerns on October last year, while short-video sharing app TikTok alongside WeChat had immediately blocked their apps in the United States.

Nonetheless, a US Federal Court had later reversed the executive orders which never came into existence.

Biden drops US ban on WeChat, TikTok

Although, the US President Joe Biden had ordered on Wednesday to drop a ban on WeChat and TikTok in the United States, a White House Official was quoted saying shortly after the announcement that Biden Administration remained utterly cautious over potential data risks that TikTok’s American users might yield.

On top of that, a separate review on plausible national security threats stemming off TikTok which was launched back in the 2019s, remained active and ongoing. Meanwhile, the Biden order had asked US Commerce Department to closely review the use of TikTok and to make recommendations within 120 days on whether uses of apps such as TikTok and WeChat controlled by foreign companies, could affect US national security.