In the summer of 2020, US President Donald Trump developed a bizarre obsession with TikTok. Amid a pandemic, historic unemployment and racial unrest subsuming the country, the daily flood of headlines turned to the Chinese-owned social media app. In August 2020, in an attempt to deal another blow to Beijing, Trump issued a pair of executive orders banning TikTok unless the app’s US business was sold to an American technology company. Zhang Yiming, the founder of TikTok’s parent company ByteDance Ltd, openly negotiated for months to sell TikTok. However, an alternative strategy prevailed: ByteDance waited out President Trump until he was voted out of office.

Source: The Star May 20, 2021 09:05 UTC