WASHINGTON: TikTok has said that the Biden administration has demanded that Chinese app TikTok’s owners divest their stakes in the popular video app or face a possible United States (US) ban.
The move is dramatic in a series of recent steps by the United States officials and legislators who have raised fears that TikTok’s US user data could be passed on to Chinese government. ByteDance-owned TikTok app has more than 100 million US users.
The US administration stance
It is the first time under the administration of President Joe Biden that a potential ban on the TikTok app has been threatened. Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, had tried to prohibit the TikTok app in 2020 but was blocked by US courts.
The TikTok app spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter told Reuters that the company had recently heard from the United States Treasury-led Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which demanded that the Chinese owners of the app sell their shares, and said otherwise they would face a possible US ban of the video app.
The Wall Street Journal first reported the decision. ByteDance confirmed that 60 percent of its shares are owned by global investors, 20 percent by employees, and 20 percent by its founders.
Committee on Foreign Investment in the US, an influential national security body, had unanimously recommended in 2020 that ByteDance divest the TikTok app. Under pressure from then-President Trump, ByteDance, in late 2020, unsuccessfully sought to finalise a deal with Walmart and Oracle Corp to shift TikTok’s United States assets into a new entity.
