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| Tik Tok deal with Walmart has been postponed indefinitely |
The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that Walmart and Oracle's plans to acquire TikTok businesses in the United States have been postponed indefinitely due to actions by President Joe Biden in response to potential security threats facing Chinese tech companies.
Since last fall, the TikTok deal, led by then-President Donald Trump, has fallen into disrepair, as TikTok's ByteDance has presented a successful legal challenge to the US government's efforts.
The former presidential administration (Donald Trump) reported national security concerns by targeting the TikTok platform, arguing that the Chinese government could obtain personal information from US users, which TikTok denied.
At the time, ByteDance was in a lawsuit with the US government because several federal courts blocked the Commerce Department's attempts to suspend Tik Tok operations in the US.
The Wall Street Journal report, citing people close to the issue, says discussions between representatives from ByteDance and US national security officials are continuing.
These discussions focused on data security and how to prevent the Chinese government from accessing information about US users collected by TikTok.
With the Biden administration's decision to respond to potential security risks arising from data gathering by Chinese tech companies, the next decision to solve TikTok-related issues will not be made quickly.
“We plan to develop a comprehensive approach to addressing data security issues in the United States in response to the various threats we face,” said National Security Council spokeswoman Emily Horn (Emily Horn).
"This includes the risks posed by Chinese applications and other programs that are running in the United States in the coming months. We hope that we look into specific cases with a full understanding of the risks we face," she added.
Since September, TikTok has been negotiating with Walmart and Oracle to enter into a deal to transfer Tik Tok assets in the US to a new entity to prevent their use from being blocked in the country altogether.
TikTok has over 100 million users in the United States and has a simple user interface and various background music options and special effects that allow users to create interesting short movies.