WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 10th September, 2020) ByteDance Ltd, the parent company of TikTok, is discussing with the US government options to avoid a full sale of its operations in the United States that President Donald Trump has threatened to ban if the company remains under Chinese control, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
Discussions around such an option have assumed increased urgency since the Chinese government took steps that made the sale of the video sharing app more difficult, the WSJ quoted people familiar with the situation as saying.
Trump signed an executive order ordering US citizens and entities to stop transactions with TikTok by mid-September for national security reasons, saying Americans' data privacy will be breached by continued use of the application. The Trump administration's alternative to TikTok was that the company be sold to a US entity.
ByteDance filed a lawsuit in US court last month against Trump's order. The company said the executive order was issued without any prior outreach to management and without giving it a chance to respond to the US government's accusations, thus violating the Constitution and the firm's right to due process.
Prior to the report, TikTok has held preliminary sales talks with US tech giant microsoft and retail behemoth Walmart.
