TikTok must either be sold or blocked in the US due to national security concerns, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says in the latest ominous US warning to the Chinese-owned app.
TikTok, he says, simply “cannot exist as it does.”
Mnuchin does not comment directly on US President Donald Trump’s threat Friday to bar the wildly popular video-sharing app.
The secretary recalls that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States — which he chairs — is reviewing TikTok, which is especially popular with young audiences who create and watch its short-form videos and has an estimated one billion users worldwide.
But in one of many fronts in US-Chinese relations that have turned practically poisonous these days, US officials have said it could be a tool for Chinese intelligence. TikTok denies any such suggestion.
“I will say publicly that the entire committee agrees that TikTok cannot stay in the current format because it risks sending back information on 100 million Americans,” Mnuchin says Sunday on ABC.
— AFP
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