The administration of the new US president Joe Biden has requested and obtained a suspension in the lawsuit against TikTok and WeChat. It was brought by the Donald Trump administration because it saw the Chinese apps as a threat to national security.
The Donald Trump administration has sought a ban on TikTok and WeChat, but the Biden administration now says it needs time to investigate the matter. The Department of Commerce says it will review the motivations for the ban on the apps as outlined in Donald Trump ‘s Executive Order on August 6, 2020. “A reconsideration of this prohibition could mean that the court has less or no work on this case,” it continues.
The Department of Commerce wants to provide a status update every sixty days. The motion was put online by Jurist.org , among others, and the White House press officer provided additional comment .
Last year, ex-president Trump stated that the data collection from the two apps was grounds for a trade ban with the companies behind it. “This data collection threatens to give the Chinese Communist Party access to private information about Americans and may be able to use it to track down the location of officials to build blackmail files and conduct corporate espionage.”
The previous government was willing to lift the ban on TikTok if an American company took over the social medium’s operations in the country. A prominent candidate for that was the combination of Walmart and Oracle, but the changing circumstances associated with a new president have reportedly postponed that acquisition indefinitely .
In the meantime, Chinese companies are also busy. They also went to court to challenge the trade ban. So far that has been successful: the apps have not yet gone black in the country. Donald Trump also took action against Huawei, DJI and chipmaker SMIC under the guise of protecting national security.
