TikTok logos are seen on smartphones in front of a displayed ByteDance logo in this illustration taken November 27, 2019.
Dado Ruvic | Reuters
President Donald Trump issued an executive order Friday that will force China’s ByteDance to sell or spin off its U.S. TikTok business within 90 days.
“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,” Trump said in the order.
The order was seen as good news for TikTok — a wildly popular short form video sharing app — and its future in the U.S., at least relative to an earlier executive order from Trump last week. The prior order could have forced U.S. based app stores to stop distributing the TikTok app if its parent ByteDance did not reach a deal to divest from it in 45 days.
The new order buys time for ByteDance to sort out a potential deal for TikTok.
Under the latest order, ByteDance is expected to destroy all its copies of TikTok data attached to U.S. users.
This is a developing story.
-Reuters contributed to this report
