In an order issued late Friday, President Trump said ByteDance, the Chinese owner of video app TikTok, must sell its U.S. assets. ByteDance acquired the U.S. app Musical.ly in 2017 and merged it with its own TikTok application to create the wildly popular video app. “There is credible evidence that leads me to believe that ByteDance... might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States,” said Trump’s order, which came after a probe by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., a government body that reviews acquisitions of U.S. businesses by foreigners. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement that the probe was “exhaustive” and came to the unanimous conclusion that ByteDance’s U.S. assets must be sold “to protect U.S. users from exploitation of their personal data.”
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