Apple, Ford, Disney push back Trump’s WeChat ban: WSJ

Several large US companies have expressed concern about the effects of the Trump administration’s executive order on WeChat, according to a report in The Wall S

Apple, Ford, Disney push back Trump’s WeChat ban: WSJ

Business

2020-08-16 18:22:19

Several large US companies have expressed concern about the effects of the Trump administration’s WeChat executive order, according to a

report in The Wall Street Journal

. “More than a dozen companies, including Apple, Ford, Walmart and Disney, are all said to have participated in a call Tuesday with White House officials, where the companies detailed the harmful consequences that a ban on WeChat could have their own businesses. .

The decree was signed Thursday evening and explicitly blocks “any transaction related to WeChat. It is expected to go into effect in a few weeks, but due to its broad wording, there is still a lot of confusion over the intended scope of the ban, which is being submitted to the Commerce Department. One of the reasons for the call between the White House and US business, according to the WSJ, was to seek clarity in this regard.

How Trump’s WeChat Ban Could Devastate Chinese Ap Businessple

Operated by internet giant Tencent, WeChat is the dominant messaging application in China and is also widely used for payments, e-commerce, marketing, etc. It’s no exaggeration to say that it’s a pervasive presence in modern Chinese life and that any smartphone without access would be extremely difficult to sell.

This means that a ban would obviously directly harm Apple, as an American company that would no longer be able to offer viable products in the larger market mobile world. An App Store without WeChat would be even more of a problem for the iPhone in China than the lack of Google services is for Huawei elsewhere.

But even US companies with a plusDistant relationship with the smartphone industry are cause for concern. Not being able to market pproducts or managing transactions on WeChat would significantly hamper their operations in China and their ability to reach Chinese consumers. These companies hope the scope of the executive order will be narrowed down and clarified in the coming weeks, the WSJ says.