TikTok to take legal action against Trump over ban

Chinese video app TikTok has confirmed it will file a lawsuit to challenge US President Donald Trump’s executive order to ban the app. 

Trump’s order prohibits US transactions with TikTok’s owner ByteDance from mid-September.

TikTok in a statement said that it had tried to engage with the US administration for nearly a year, but faced “a lack of due process” and that the government paid no attention to the facts.

“To ensure that the rule of law is not discarded and that our company and users are treated fairly, we have no choice but to challenge the executive order through the judicial system,” the video app’s spokesperson said.

Officials in Washington are concerned that the company could pass data on American users to the Chinese government, something TikTok owner ByteDance has denied doing.

The short video-sharing app has 80 million active users in the US.

BBC reported that TikTok expects the legal action to begin this week.

On Friday a group of Chinese-Americans filed a separate lawsuit against the president’s similar ban on the social media app WeChat, which is owned by the Chinese firm, Tencent.

The White House has claimed that TikTok and WeChat threaten US security 

The US measures come ahead of November 3 elections in which Trump, who is behind his rival Joe Biden in the polls, is campaigning hard on an increasingly strident anti-Beijing message.