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Trump's TikTok and WeChat Ban



Last Thursday (08/06), The President of the United States, Donald Trump, declared a bold ultimatum on two Chinese social media giants, TikTok and WeChat, going with the plan to ban their usage in America. To begin with, WeChat is a billion-user app primarily used by Chinese-speaking populations across the world. It functions as a go-to app for messaging, shopping, gaming, and even dating. The app's strong foundation thrives due to miniscule counterparts as its competitors (like WhatsApp) are banned in China by government mandate. Meanwhile, TikTok, ByteDance's golden boy, is rising exponentially and is continuously gaining popularity worldwide. Their catchy, short, and entertaining videos has successfully caught 800 million global users. However, the POTUS claimed that WeChat and TikTok both threaten the nation's security as they are "puppet tools made by the Chinese Communist Party to gain and track necessary information". Tencent and ByteDance, as the owner of WeChat and TikTok respectively, are obliged to sell their app to US companies by mid-September to prevent the ban.


Donald Trump's WeChat ban is threatening one of the more eye-catching stock rallies of 2020. Tencent Holdings Ltd. stock experienced a sharp decline at Monday's close of 4.8% compared to Friday's closing of 527.5, which puts the stock's two-day loss of market value at $66 billion following America's move to ban residents from using the WeChat application. The company has previously been hailed as a Chinese mega-inno