US President Donald Trump on August 14 signed yet another executive order essentially directing TikTok's Chinese parent company ByteDance to divest from its American assets and it rights to any user data that TikTok gathered in the country, within 90 days. The new executive order directs Bytedance to destroy any TikTok data from US users, and report to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States once all the data has been destroyed. Bytedance must also destroy any data collected by Musical.ly, which the company bought in 2017, as per the new order. “There is credible evidence that leads me to believe that ByteDance”, which merged Musical.ly and TikTok's apps and userbase in 2018, “might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States,” Trump said in the new order. Before this, Trump had barred all US transactions with TikTok and WeChat by means of an executive order signed earlier in August (more on that below). What the new executive order mandates: ByteDance will have to divest “any tangible or intangible assets or property, wherever located, used to enable or support ByteDance's operation of the TikTok application in the United States,” the order said. The CFUIS will determine these assets and properties. Immediately upon divestment, ByteDance will also have to certify in writing to CFIUS that it has destroyed all data that it was required to divest, and submit copies of such data wherever located, the executive order said. It is worth noting that by…
