![]() ![]() “I stand with President Trump’s commitment to protecting the privacy and security of Americans from threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party,” he said. “The Chinese government requires that all commercial companies, big and small, support the Chinese Communist Party’s political objectives,” National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien said in a statement.Ĭommerce Secretary Wilbur Ross issued a separate statement saying he has directed his department to carry out the order. Instead, they pointed to the size of the payment platforms, saying their scope made them likely targets for Chinese data collection efforts. Senior administration officials said they believe the move could help stop the encroachment of Chinese data collection and prevent personal information like texts, calls, and photos from being gathered by an adversary.īut they didn’t identify specific instances of data theft using the applications. Still, Trump’s order, which cites concerns that the platforms threaten national security, has the potential to significantly disrupt international commerce. Why Trump Is Threatening Your Teen’s Favorite App: QuickTake But the officials did not answer a question about whether it would affect individual payments between users of the platforms. The Trump administration envisions the scope as being similar to the prior orders and does not anticipate it impacting employee payroll, a senior administration official said. Presumably, the impact will be focused on transactions in the United States, although that is not guaranteed.” “The ultimate scope of the restrictions and the entities that will be targeted is hard to predict. ![]() “The new Executive Order is similar to, but appears to be more broadly worded, than last year’s Executive Orders targeting transactions in respect of WeChat and TikTok,” said Nicholas Turner, a lawyer at Steptoe & Johnson LLP in Hong Kong. But in 2019, Alipay inked deals with retailers like drugstore chain Walgreens, placing the app’s logo in front of millions more U.S. on places where Chinese consumers visit and shop, such as luxury stores in New York or tourist destinations in California. Ant’s signature app has mainly focused in the U.S. Alibaba and Tencent shares rose more than 2% on Wednesday in Hong Kong.Īlipay, the service that grew out of Alibaba’s immense e-commerce operation, managed just over 207,000 downloads in 2020. Starbucks Corp., for example, allows customers to pay with WeChat Pay in China. It’s not clear whether the order could be applied to transactions outside the U.S. Apps like WeChat and Alipay have their biggest customer base in greater China and the number of users in the U.S. The immediate impact is likely to be limited. But Biden could also pause or erase the policy upon taking office. The order is likely to face legal challenges similar to those mounted against the president’s prior efforts to force the sale of TikTok from China’s ByteDance Ltd. Its actions only harm American consumers, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a daily briefing in Beijing on Wednesday. The executive order, which directed the Commerce Department to draft rules outlining which payments and transactions will be outlawed, will hit Tencent’s QQ, QQ Wallet and WeChat Pay as well as lesser-known apps CamScanner, SHAREit, VMate and WPS Office. Trump’s 11th-hour move again threatens to snarl relations between the world’s two largest economies, which have clashed over everything from the pandemic to Hong Kong. It deals another blow to Ant co-founder Jack Ma, who hasn’t been seen in public since Chinese regulators halted Ant’s $35 billion IPO and launched an antitrust probe into Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. The order is the outgoing administration’s latest bid to use national security powers against China’s largest companies, but it will be up to President-elect Joe Biden to decide whether to enforce the policy. transactions with eight Chinese apps including Ant Group Co.’s Alipay and Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s digital wallets, riling Beijing days before he’s slated to leave office. President Donald Trump signed an order banning U.S.
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