Trump to block U.S. downloads of TikTok, WeChat on Sunday

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The Trump administration has ramped up efforts to purge “untrusted" Chinese apps from U.S. digital networks and has called TikTok and WeChat “significant threats.”

TikTok has 100 million users in the United States and is especially popular among younger Americans.

WeChat has had an average of 19 million daily active users in the United States, analytics firms Apptopia said in early August. It is popular among Chinese students, ex-pats and some Americans who have personal or business relationships in China.

WeChat is an all-in-one mobile app that combines services similar to Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Venmo. The app is an essential part of daily life for many in China and boasts more than 1 billion users.

The Commerce Department will not seek to compel people in the United States to remove the apps or stop using them but will not allow updates or new downloads. "We are aiming at a top corporate level. We're not going to go out after the individual users," one Commerce official said.

Over time, officials said, the lack of updates will degrade the apps usability.

"The expectation is that people will find alternative ways to do these actions," a senior official said. "We expect the market to act and there will be more secure apps that will fill in these gaps that Americans can trust and that the United States government won't have to take similar actions against."

Commerce is also barring additional technical transactions with WeChat starting Sunday that will significantly reduce the usability and functionality of the app in the United States.

The order bars data hosting within the United States for WeChat, content delivery services and networks that can increase functionality and internet transit or peering services.

"What immediately is going to happen is users are going to experience a lag or lack of functionality," a senior Commerce official said of WeChat users. "It may still be usable but it is not going to be as functional as it was." There may be sporadic outages as well, the official said.

Commerce will bar the same set of technical transactions for TikTok, but that will not take effect until Nov. 12 to give the company additional time to see if ByteDance can reach a deal for its U.S. operations. The official said TikTok U.S. users would not see "a major difference" in the app's performance until Nov. 12.

Commerce will not penalize people who use TikTok or WeChat in the United States.

The order does not bar data storage within the United States for WeChat or TikTok.

Some Americans may find workarounds. There is nothing that would bar an American from traveling to a foreign country and downloading either app, or potentially using a virtual private network and a desktop client, officials conceded.