US Commerce Department Rescinded TikTok, WeChat From Prohibited Transactions list

On monday, The US Commerce Department stated,it was rescinding a prohibited transactions list with TikTok and WeChat that were issued in month of September as the Trump administration sought to block new US downloads of both Chinese-owned applications.

The withdrawals came after President Joe Biden earlier this month withdrew a series of Trump-era executive orders that sought to ban the new downloads of Tencent-owned WeChat and TikTok, and ordered the Commerce Department review of security concerns posed by those applications and others.
The Biden order directed the Commerce Department to monitor the software apps such as TikTok that could affect US national security, and also to make recommendations within 120 days to protect US data acquired or accessible by organisations controlled by foreign adversaries.

PARIS, FRANCE – MARCH 05: In this photo illustration, the social media application logo, Tik Tok is displayed on the screen of an iPhone on March 05, 2019 in Paris, France. The social network broke the rules for the protection of children’s online privacy (COPPA) and was fined $ 5.7 million. The fact TikTok criticized is quite serious in the United States, the platform, which currently has more than 500 million users worldwide, collected data that should not have asked minors. TikTok, also known as Douyin in China, is a media app for creating and sharing short videos. Owned by ByteDance, Tik Tok is a leading video platform in Asia, United States, and other parts of the world. In 2018, the application gained popularity and became the most downloaded app in the U.S. in October 2018. (Photo by Chesnot/Getty Images)

The January Trump order directed to ban transactions with eight Chinese applications like- Ant Group’s Alipay and Tencent’s QQ Wallet and WeChat pay. No bans have been issued to date.

The Trump administration had appealed the judicial orders blocking the bans on TikTok and WeChat, but after Biden took office in January, the US Justice Department asked to pause the appeals.A separate US national security review of TikTok, introduced in late 2019, remains active.