With US ban on TikTok on the table, opponent of move warns of retaliation against American firms
- President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign has started running Facebook ads warning about the Chinese-owned app
- ‘Foreign tech companies should not be kept out of the US market because of rumours and innuendo,’ analyst says
As the Trump administration considers a ban on TikTok, the Chinese-owned short video app, an opponent of such a move says it would jeopardise US tech firms and global business norms.
“The US government should not ban TikTok simply because it is owned by a Chinese company,” said Daniel Castro, vice-president at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a public policy think tank in Washington.
The idea of a ban has been gathering momentum. Over the weekend, US President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign ran Facebook ads warning about TikTok. This week, the House of Representatives plans to vote on a Republican-backed amendment in a national defence bill that would ban federal employees from downloading or using TikTok on any government device.
TikTok, which is owned by Beijing-based internet tech company ByteDance, has denied that it shares user data with China.
ITIF, which gets funding from Cisco and Google, among others, said in a statement that “if the US government has evidence to the contrary, it should share this information with lawmakers and the public”.