Tiktok sues Donald Trump over executive order banning video app
Tiktok and parent company Bytedance have today sued US President Donald Trump over his decision to sign an executive order banning the short-form video app.
In a blog post earlier today, the firm said that it had been left with “no choice” but to sue the president, adding that it strongly disagreed with the White House’s position that it presented a national security threat.
It also accused Trump of using the executive order as a campaigning ploy to ramp up a “broader campaign of anti-China rhetoric” ahead of November’s US presidential election.
Court records from a federal court in Los Angeles showed that the firm had filed for legal action against Trump, commerce secretary Wilbur Ross and the department of commerce.
Tiktok added that it had taken “taken extraordinary measures to protect the privacy and security of Tiktok’s US user data.”
“We do not take suing the government lightly. But with the executive order threatening to bring a ban on our U.S. operations, we simply have no choice.”
The firms are seeking an injunction to block Trump from enforcing the order, Reuters reported.
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The firm explicitly rejected the President’s security concerns, saying the move was “a gross misappropriation of International Emergency Economic Powers Act authority and a pretext for furthering the President’s broader campaign of anti-China rhetoric in the run-up to the U.S. election.”
The two sides were engaged in nearly a year of talks to find a solution to Trump’s concerns, but the video app said the White House had ignored the “extensive efforts” it had undertaken to address them.
Earlier this month, Tiktok said the administration had “paid no attention to facts, dictated terms of an agreement without going through standard legal processes, and tried to insert itself into negotiations between private businesses”.
With tensions increasing between the US and China, the President had been a vocal critic of Chinese-owned apps such as Tiktok and Wechat, saying that they might share information about users with the Chinese government.
Eventually, on 6 August, Trump signed an executive order banning any transactions with the two companies from 20 September.
The two apps must be removed from Apple and Google’s app stores and all business ceased with US companies by the deadline.
Bytedance is currently in negotiations over a sale of its US operations with Microsoft, which the President has permitted to continue but ruled must conclude by 15 September.