Follow us on social

Shutterstock_1787988620-2-scaled

Why Trump’s ban on WeChat and TikTok will fail

Banning the popular mobile apps will only fan tensions between the US and China and spark blowback against American companies.

Analysis | Asia-Pacific

The Trump administration is moving ahead with its ban on the popular Chinese apps WeChat and TikTok. This is a significant step in what has become a growing consensus in Washington that the two largest economies in the world need to create a different framework for their relationship to continue on equal footing.

There is some merit to confronting China on a whole host of economic issues, such as forced technology transfers, theft of intellectual property, and subsidies to national champions like Huawei that give an unfair advantage to Chinese companies over their American and European counterparts.

But banning TikTok and WeChat does little to advance any of Washington’s long-term strategic objectives and amounts to nothing more than playing whack-a-mole with two widely popular apps that could force China to take retaliatory actions that negatively affect American consumers and companies.  

WeChat is much more than a social media platform for China — messaging is just one aspect of what it does. It is used to book flights and hotels, facilitate payments, and it acts as a gaming platform. It is PayPal, WhatsApp, Amazon, Expedia, and PlayStation rolled into one portal and  averages 1.2 billion monthly users. American businesses in China such as Starbucks, McDonalds, and Nike depend heavily on its payment platform to conduct their China-related business. 

The app works differently in the United States and is mostly used by Chinese Americans and Chinese citizens who live, study, and work here. The Trump administration is right to be concerned about how China censors the content that is disseminated on the app. WeChat’s parent company, Tencent, is close to the Chinese Communist Party, and, as with Huawei, there is always a fear that Chinese regulators could force the transfer of personal information of the app’s users.

But banning the app does little to resolve any of those concerns. Rather, it is a giant leap toward a tech cold war that would bifurcate the world between U.S. and Chinese tech powerhouses. It gives China a powerful incentive to block or ban American companies from doing business in China.

Take Apple, the world’s largest company by market capitalization — more people buy Apple smartphones in China than in the United States, and most of Apple’s assembly plants are based in China. What would happen if WeChat decided to stop allowing its app to be downloaded on Apple’s operating system? A phone in China without WeChat is worthless, and Apple’s customer base there would evaporate overnight as Chinese customers flock to alternatives. This would have a dramatic effect on Apple’s bottom line. 

China has foreshadowed a bit of what it could do when the Trump administration demanded that China's ByteDance, the parent company of the popular app TikTok — which has over 100 million U.S. users — to sell its U.S. operations. Beijing’s regulatory watchdog ruled that TikTok’s valuable algorithm could not be a part of any sale. Without that algorithm, it is unclear that an actual sale of TikTok would be of any value. It is the code within the algorithm that uses advanced machine learning (AI) to direct content with which it believes the user is most likely to interact with. The Trump administration has signaled over the weekend that it will approve a deal that will spin TikTok off from ByteDance into an American company, but it’s still unclear if China will approve the deal.

Is it really going to be Washington’s policy that every time China produces an innovative tech company, the U.S. president will ban it? What will that do for technological innovation which has always benefited from global collaboration? As China’s tech sector becomes increasingly advanced and sophisticated, will we erect our own version of a “a great fire wall” and deny their apps to U.S. users?

A better strategy would be to develop coherent criteria for determining what information U.S. and international tech firms can collect from users and how and under what circumstances that information can be shared. The U.S. can work with like-minded allies such as the European Union, Japan, and South Korea — whose technology architecture is intertwined with it — to come up with universal principles and then demanding all companies that seek access to U.S. tech platforms adhere to that standard.

Such a policy would be far more equitable, and beneficial to both American and Chinese companies and users than going through the pain of decoupling which will only accelerate a tech cold war.   


Image: rafapress via Shutterstock.com
Analysis | Asia-Pacific
Kim Jong Un
Top photo credit: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visits the construction site of the Ragwon County Offshore Farm, North Korea July 13, 2025. KCNA via REUTERS

Kim Jong Un is nuking up and playing hard to get

Asia-Pacific

President Donald Trump’s second term has so far been a series of “shock and awe” campaigns both at home and abroad. But so far has left North Korea untouched even as it arms for the future.

The president dramatically broke with precedent during his first term, holding two summits as well as a brief meeting at the Demilitarized Zone with the North’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un. Unfortunately, engagement crashed and burned in Hanoi. The DPRK then pulled back, essentially severing contact with both the U.S. and South Korea.

keep readingShow less
Why new CENTCOM chief Brad Cooper is as wrong as the old one
Top photo credit: U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Brad Cooper speaks to guests at the IISS Manama Dialogue in Manama, Bahrain, November 17, 2023. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed

Why new CENTCOM chief Brad Cooper is as wrong as the old one

Middle East

If accounts of President Donald Trump’s decision to strike Iranian nuclear facilities this past month are to be believed, the president’s initial impulse to stay out of the Israel-Iran conflict failed to survive the prodding of hawkish advisers, chiefly U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) chief Michael Kurilla.

With Kurilla, an Iran hawk and staunch ally of both the Israeli government and erstwhile national security adviser Mike Waltz, set to leave office this summer, advocates of a more restrained foreign policy may understandably feel like they are out of the woods.

keep readingShow less
Putin Trump
Top photo credit: Vladimir Putin (Office of the President of the Russian Federation) and Donald Trump (US Southern Command photo)

How Trump's 50-day deadline threat against Putin will backfire

Europe

In the first six months of his second term, President Donald Trump has demonstrated his love for three things: deals, tariffs, and ultimatums.

He got to combine these passions during his Oval Office meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Monday. Only moments after the two leaders announced a new plan to get military aid to Ukraine, Trump issued an ominous 50-day deadline for Russian President Vladimir Putin to agree to a ceasefire. “We're going to be doing secondary tariffs if we don't have a deal within 50 days,” Trump told the assembled reporters.

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.