Trump Issues Ridiculous Executive Orders Banning TikTok And WeChat

Trump Issues Ridiculous Executive Orders Banning TikTok And WeChat

3 years ago
Anonymous $qOHwDUKgAF

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200806/23225245070/trump-issues-ridiculous-executive-orders-banning-tiktok-wechat.shtml

While he had said he would do it last weekend, and then said he'd wait until September 15th (but that he wanted a finder's fee if TikTok was sold to Microsoft), last night the Trump White House issued two executive orders regarding apps from Chinese companies. The first one claims it's banning TikTok and the second one says it's banning WeChat (which isn't even that popular in the US, though it is hugely popular in China). He separately sent a letter to Congress about the TikTok ban.

As many people expected, Trump is trying to use the IEEPA, the same (already questionable) authority he used to put tariffs on a bunch of products from China at the beginning of his nonsense tradewar. This is only supposed to be used in cases of unusual or extraordinary threats -- and let's be totally blunt: TikTok is not an unusual or extraordinary threat to anything beyond President Trump's massive ego.