Rubio wants Biden to block TikTok after Chinese government stake

WASHINGTON, Aug. 17 (Reuters) – Republican Senator Marco Rubio on Tuesday called on President Joe Biden to block the shorthand video app TikTok in the United States after China took a stake in a key subsidiary of ByteDance, the parent company Beijing-based TikTok.

The Biden administration in June withdrew a series of Trump-era executive orders to ban new downloads of WeChat and TikTok.

“Beijing’s aggressiveness makes it clear that the regime sees TikTok as an extension of the party-state, and the United States must treat it that way,” Rubio said Tuesday.

Reporting by David Shepardson Editing by Chris Reese

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