Update (October 2026): The app store ban described below never took effect. Federal judges blocked it in September 2020, and on June 9, 2021, President Biden revoked Trump’s executive orders against TikTok and WeChat. The fight over TikTok continued: in April 2024, Congress passed a law requiring TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell its US business or face a ban. The deadline arrived in January 2025, and President Trump then delayed enforcement.
In September 2020, the administration of US President Donald Trump announced a ban on two Chinese apps, TikTok and WeChat, in US app stores.
Trump accused both apps of collecting data from users that Beijing could access. TikTok, an app for creating and sharing short videos, is hugely popular in the US, while WeChat is widely used as a chat app, payment service and news source.
Does the president’s decision rob Americans of their freedoms? And will it lead to an East-West divide of the internet? In the video at the top of this post, presenter Halla Mohieddeen discusses these questions with three guests:
- Mitch Stoltz, a San Francisco-based attorney focusing on copyright and free speech
- Manya Koetse, an Amsterdam-based watcher of social trends and online media in China
- Dipayan Ghosh, who leads the Digital Platforms & Democracy Project at Harvard University
In this article
What did Donald Trump say?
In both executive orders, Mr Trump says that the spread in the US of mobile apps developed and owned by Chinese companies continues to “threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States”.
The US government says TikTok and WeChat “capture vast swaths of information from its users”. According to the orders, “this data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information.”
The orders also claim that both apps collect data on Chinese citizens visiting the US, which lets Beijing “keep tabs” on them.
Mr Trump’s order also says TikTok’s data collection could allow China to track US government employees, gather personal information for blackmail, or carry out corporate espionage.
He notes that, according to reports, TikTok censors content that is politically sensitive for China, such as the protests in Hong Kong and China’s treatment of the Uighurs, a Muslim minority.
The orders were issued under the legal authority of the National Emergencies Act and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
What does TikTok say?
In its strongest response to the US government so far, TikTok said the executive order is based on “unnamed reports with no citations”.
“We have made clear that TikTok has never shared user data with the Chinese government, nor censored content at its request,” it said.
“We even expressed our willingness to pursue a full sale of the US business to an American company.”
Mr Trump had said he would support a sale to Microsoft, as long as the US government received a “substantial portion” of the sale price. (In the end, ByteDance turned down Microsoft’s offer in September 2020.)
TikTok said the new executive order “risks undermining global businesses’ trust in the United States’ commitment to the rule of law”, adding that it sets “a dangerous precedent for the concept of free expression and open markets”.
“We will pursue all remedies available to us in order to ensure that the rule of law is not discarded and that our company and our users are treated fairly, if not by the administration, then by the US courts,” it said.
Other countries and TikTok
At the time, TikTok was reported to have around 800 million monthly active users, and its biggest markets had grown in the US and India.
India, however, had already blocked TikTok, as well as other Chinese apps.
Australia, which had already banned Huawei and ZTE, was also considering a TikTok ban.
Why WeChat is under fire
WeChat is very popular among people with connections to China, where major social networks such as WhatsApp and Facebook are blocked.
It is also seen as a key tool in China’s internal surveillance system. For example, local users accused of spreading “malicious rumors” have to register a face scan and a voice print.
A seminar held earlier in 2020 by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute think tank discussed how groups in the app are used day to day to recommend holiday destinations, restaurants and the like, but then switch to spreading political messages in line with Beijing’s thinking at critical times.
For a similar privacy debate about an app from Russia, read whether FaceApp sells your personal data.
