WASHINGTON – President Trump has signed an executive order banning transactions with eight Chinese connectivity apps, including the Alipay payment platform owned by Chinese billionaire Jack Ma’s Ant Group Co.
The order also bans transactions with the WeChat Pay app owned by Chinese technology giant Tencent Holdings Ltd., along with six other apps.
The order, signed on Tuesday, will take effect within 45 days after Trump leaves office. It instructs Trade Secretary Wilbur Ross to evaluate other apps that could pose a threat to national security, and calls on the Secretary of Commerce, the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence to submit a report with issue recommendations to transfer data from US users to foreign adversaries.
Mr. Trump said in the order that the programs could gain access to private information of their users. The information could be used by the Chinese government to “locate the locations of federal employees and contractors and compile dossiers of personal information,” he said. Trump said.
Alipay, a payment and lifestyle app with more than 1 billion users, is owned by Ant Group, the Chinese giant for financial technology launched by Mr. Mom is controlled. An ant representative made no immediate comment. A WeChat representative also did not immediately comment.
The new move comes after the Trump administration issued some executive orders in August aimed at imposing new limits on Chinese social media apps TikTok and WeChat, citing national security. Both orders faced legal challenges.
The order banning downloads of Tencent’s WeChat was blocked by a federal judge in September shortly before it was due to take effect.
The Trump administration tried to reverse the ruling. WeChat is a competitor of Alipay.
U.S. companies doing business with China have expressed concern about the potential scope of WeChat’s executive order, arguing that it could make them less competitive there. U.S. businesses may raise similar concerns about the new order.
Two federal judges also separately blocked the Trump administration’s TikTok ban from taking effect. The ban would have restricted U.S. companies from conducting transactions with TikTok, including presenting the company’s data and delivering the company’s content, which would have rendered the app virtually unusable in the US.
The government has said it is afraid that TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance Ltd. would share information about US users with the Chinese government, and the government said it would never buy Chinese parent company ByteDance Ltd. would not share. do.
The Trump administration has also sought to restrict China-based telecommunications companies, such as Huawei Technologies Co., by executing orders. These actions were aimed at securing US networks, but they also seemed to undermine the competitiveness of Chinese businesses around the world if the next generation of 5G wireless service was made available.
Write to Andrew Restuccia at [email protected] and John D. McKinnon at [email protected]
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