Trump gives ByteDance 90-day deadline to sell US TikTok operations
US President Donald Trump has issued an executive order extending an ultimatum forcing a popular Chinese-based company to divest its business operations in the United States.
Trump's order on Friday extended video-sharing platform TikTok's deadline from 45 days to 90 days to either sell or spin off its US operations.
Trump had originally ordered TikTok's Chinese-owned mother company, ByteDance, to divest its US operations by November 12.
In the new order, the company is required to destroy any data gathered from US users and report it to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States once all the data has been destroyed.
TikTok precursor app Musical.ly, which the company bought in 2017, must also destroy all it data.
The original order, which had a 45-day deadline ending on September 20, did not include any of these new requirements.
Trump has claimed TikTok's activities constitute a threat to US national security.
“There is credible evidence that leads me to believe that ByteDance ... might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States,” Trump stated in the executive order.
US-based tech-giant Microsoft has been earmarked to take over TikTok.
In the meantime, TikTok's American employees are set to sue the Trump’s administration over a ban on the popular video-sharing service. Mike Godwin, a lawyer representing TikTok's employees, said the company's legal challenge to Trump's executive order will be separate from a pending lawsuit lodged by ByteDance.
Meanwhile, diplomatic relations between Washington and Beijing have dropped to the lowest level in decades since Trump has came to power. The two countries are currently at loggerheads over numerous issues, including a trade war, technological war, diplomatic row, dispute over sanctions against North Korea, Hong Kong's security, Taiwan's independence, navigation in the East and South China Seas, and most recently, the coronavirus pandemic.
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