Donald Trump signs order banning transactions with TikTok parent company

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that would ban the social media app TikTok from operating in the US in 45 days if it is not sold by its Chinese parent company ByteDance.

The order says the US "must take aggressive action against the owners of TikTok to protect our national security", BBC reported.

The move comes as Trump seeks the divestment of the popular video app, citing national security risks to the US. It threatens penalties on any US resident or company that engages in any transactions with TikTok or ByteDance after the order takes effect, Bloomberg News repored.

“This mobile application may also be used for disinformation campaigns that benefit the Chinese Communist Party,” Trump said in the order, released Thursday by the White House. The data collection through TikTok “threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information -- potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.”

Trump had threatened a deadline of September 15 to “close down” TikTok unless Microsoft or “somebody else” bought it. TikTok, Microsoft and WeChat owner Tencent had no immediate replies to queries.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Wednesday that he was expanding the US crackdown on Chinese technology to personal apps, calling out TikTok and WeChat by name. WeChat and its sister app Weixin in China are hugely popular messaging apps, the Associated Press reported.

TikTok denies accusations it is controlled by or shares data with the Chinese government.

(With inputs from agencies)