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Biden halts plan to force TikTok to sell its US assets

The Joe Biden administration suspended the plan to force TikTok to divest its US assets while assessing the alleged security risks of the popular Chinese app, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

Citing unidentified sources, the outlet claimed that the new government had indefinitely archived the plan to demand the sale of TikTok, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, the American tech giant Oracle, with Walmart as a retail partner.

“It is not true to suggest that there is (in this case) a new step” taken by the Biden administration, he replied. Jen Psaki, a spokesman for the White House at a press conference. “If we have announcements to do, we will,” he added.

Psaki confirmed, as reported by The Wall Street Journal, that the Biden administration is reviewing the efforts of former President Donald Trump to address the alleged national security risks raised by Chinese tech companies, including collecting data from US users.

“It’s a general review that extends beyond TikTok, of course,” the spokeswoman said. Former President Donald Trump’s initiative was argued on concerns that TikTok and other Chinese online services posed security risks due to their links with the government of Beijing.

According to the newspaper report, the new administration will not force the sale of the assets promoted by the Trump administration. The measure to ban TikTok downloads had been blocked for legal issues.

TikTok, the application that has an estimated 100 million users in the country, has repeatedly defended itself against accusations of information transfers to the Chinese government, saying it stores user data on servers in the United States and Singapore. A tentative agreement revealed by the previous US government would convert the giant from Silicon Valley, Oracle, in the technology partner of TikTok and in a new entity that would be called TikTok Global.

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