White House considers banning Americans from using TikTok in escalation of China battle

Donald Trump's White House is considering an effective ban on TikTok as his latest weapon in his fight against Beijing.

Reports today said US officials were considering putting the hit app's parent company ByteDance on a blacklist restricting US companies such as Apple and Google from offering TikTak to users on their app platforms.

The Financial Times reported the administration was considering putting ByteDance on the country's "entity list" which would make it almost impossible for US firms to provide technology to TikTok, including software used by app stores to provide updates on their platforms.

If the US carries out its threat, ByteDance will join Huawei on its entity list.

An unnamed official told the FT: "We are going to send a very strong message to China."

If TikTok were banned, however, it could rebound on Trump as he prepares for a November election as the app is hugely popular in the country. Worldwide, TikTok has about 1 billion users. US officials are said to be considering a workaround whereby people could use it but without the capability for their data to be accessed by China.

Trump has previously said he was considering some sort of ban of the app, hinting it could be a retaliation for the covid virus. He has come under pressure from other members of Congress.

TikTok is also hugely popular in the UK although there is no mention of any ban here yet. The US put Chinese CCTV company Hikvision on the entity list last year but it remains the biggest operator in the UK.

Last night, Trump's economic adviser Larry Kudlow said he thought TikTok would split itself out of the Chinese parent company to operate as in independent business.

Trump has himself been ridiculed on TikTok by users who claimed to have sabotaged his Tulsa campaign rally by reserving seats and then not turning up.