Trump vows action on Chinese companies ‘in coming days’
US President Donald Trump will take action against Chinese companies sharing data with the Beijing government “in the coming days”, secretary of state Mike Pompeo said today.
“President Trump has said ‘enough’ and we’re going to fix it,” Pompeo said on Fox News this afternoon.
“He will take action in the coming days with respect to a broad array of national security risks that are presented by software connected to the Chinese Communist Party.”
It comes after Trump on Friday told reporters he would issue an order for Chinese-owned video app Tiktok to be banned in the US as early as this weekend.
“As far as Tiktok is concerned we’re banning them from the United States,” Trump said, adding that he would use presidential powers to enforce the decision.
Trump’s comments come on the back of mounting fears that data collected by the social media platform could be handed to the Chinese Communist Party and used for state spying. Tiktok denies the claims.
Pompeo today said: “They’re true privacy issues for the American people and for a long time, a long time the United States just said ‘well goodness if we’re having fun with it, or if a company can make money off of it, we’re going to permit that to happen.’”
In a statement yesterday, a White House spokesman said: “The administration has very serious national security concerns over Tiktok. We continue to evaluate future policy.”
In a bid to curb a US ban, Tiktok owner Bytedance said it was willing to offload its US operations to Microsoft, in a deal believed to be in the range of between $15bn and $30bn.
However, those plans have reportedly been shelved after fierce criticism from the President.
It comes as relations between the US and China have continued to sour over recent weeks, after Boris Johnson’s decision to U-turn on a deal with Chinese vendor Huawei was blamed on pressure from the US.
In a press conference this week, Chinese ambassador to the UK Liu Xiaoming unleashed a barrage of criticism on Beijing’s neighbours across the Pacific, and urged Britain to “resist pressure” from the US to condemn China.
Liu said it was China’s “hope that the UK would resist the pressure and coercion from a certain country and provide an open, fair, transparent and non-discriminatory environment for Chinese investment”.
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