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President Donald Trump issued an executive order on Thursday evening barring transactions with ByteDance, forcing the Chinese tech firm to divest itself of its U.S. TikTok operations.
Transcript
00:00President Donald Trump issued an executive order on Thursday evening barring transactions with
00:04the Chinese tech firm ByteDance, forcing the company to sell its U.S. TikTok operations.
00:09The order gives ByteDance until September 15th to sell the business.
00:13Microsoft said on Sunday that it was in conversations with the company about
00:16acquiring TikTok's operations in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
00:20TikTok, which has more than 100 million users in the U.S.,
00:23has drawn recent scrutiny because of its Chinese owner.
00:26The Trump administration has worried that through ByteDance,
00:28the personal data of U.S. TikTok users could find its way into the hands of the Chinese government.
00:33TikTok has said it does not store U.S. user data in China.
00:37TikTok responded to the executive order in a blog post early Friday morning,
00:41writing that the company was, quote,
00:42shocked by the order, which it says was issued without any due process.
00:45TikTok's statement reads,
00:46For nearly a year, we have sought to engage with the U.S. government in good faith
00:50to provide a constructive solution to the concerns that have been expressed.
00:53What we encountered instead was that the administration paid no attention to facts,
00:57dictated terms of an agreement without going through standard legal processes,
01:01and tried to insert itself into negotiations between private businesses.
01:04Beyond that, TikTok warned that Trump's executive order risks undermining global businesses' trust
01:09in the United States' commitment to the rule of law,
01:11which has served as a magnet for investment and spurred decades of American economic growth,
01:15and it sets a dangerous precedent for the concept of free expression and open markets.
01:19For more on this story, head to THR.com.
01:21For The Hollywood Reporter News, I'm Tiffany Taylor.
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