Trump signs order banning transactions with Chinese apps

President of the United States Donald Trump has on Tuesday signed an executive order that barred transactions with eight Chinese software applications.

According to the media reports, the recent move by the Trump administration has escalated tensions between US and China just two weeks before the President-elect Joe Biden takes office.

The executive order argues that the US must take “aggressive action” against developers of Chinese software applications to protect national security. It tasks the Commerce Department with defining which transactions will be banned under the directive within 45 days and targets Tencent Holdings Ltd’s QQ Wallet and WeChat Pay as well.

The order also names CamScanner, SHAREit, Tencent QQ, VMate which is published by Alibaba Group subsidiary UCWeb, and Beijing Kingsoft Office Software’s WPS Office.

It is worth mentioning here that the Donald Trump administration has been increasing up its pressure on Chinese firms in the weeks before Joe Biden takes office.

In the previous month, the United States imposed harsh restrictions on chipmaker SMIC and other companies that effectively cut them off from US suppliers and technology.

Trump also recently signed into law new rules that could force Chinese companies in removing them from American stock exchanges if they failed to meet US auditing standards.

The bill titled as “Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act” has made it mandatory that the companies will be removed from the US Stock Exchange if American auditors are not allowed to review the financial inspections.

The Bill stated that the U.S. Public Accounting Oversight Board to review their financial audits.