Yesterday Donald Trump issued executive orders banning U.S. transactions with Chinese tech firms ByeDance and Tencent. ByeDance is the parent company of the short video-sharing app TikTok and Tencent owns the Chinese messaging app WeChat. The ban will take place in 45 days and while the ban's scope is unclear, after the 45 days, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross ‘shall identify the transactions’ that will be subjected to the prohibition.
Upon issuing the order, Trump said the WeChat ‘automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users. This data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information’ in addition to capturing personal information of Chinese nationals visiting the U.S.
In a blog post TikTok said it was ‘shocked’ by the order, claiming there has been ‘no due process or adherence to the law’ from the Trump administration.
Today we had July’s Nonfarm Payroll numbers. The market estimates were for 1.48m jobs added, an unemployment rate of 10.6% and participation rate of 61.8% before the figures.
The actual number of jobs added was 1.763m with the previous month’s figure revised down slightly. The unemployment rate also fell to 10.2% versus the prior month’s reading of 11.1% and the participation rate fell from last month's 61.5%, to 61.4%.