What a U.S. ban on Tencent may mean for the online game industry

The U.S.-China trade war has taken another turn after U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order that will put an end to WeChat and TikTok transactions, halting any possibility of Americans doing business with the companies that own these apps — Tencent and ByteDance. Lately, the U.S. has been especially wary of national security threats supposedly posed by Chinese social media apps, particularly TikTok which has a huge base of users in the U.S.

The consequences of banning these apps in the U.S. are hard to realize with complete clarity at this point because the factors influencing how the situation will roll out following the enforcement of these executive orders are yet to come into play — such as American companies buying these Chinese apps or the extent to which the prohibitions will be enforced in practice.