Around 4,000 US teachers working online with Chinese students in China have become “collateral damage” in the Trump administration’s trade war with the People’s Republic.
The teachers were working for online ELT platform GoGoKid, part of the China-based tech empire ByteDance, which also owns the hugely popular video platform TikTok. However, on 6 August the President issued an executive order banning “any transaction” with TikTok and any of ByteDance’s subsidiaries. American citizens who break the ban may face fines of up to $300,000.
GoGoKid’s English teachers are anxiously awaiting developments. The US Department of Commerce has yet to rule on which parts of the ByteDance empire will be covered by the ban, which was only expected to go into full force after the November presidential election, meaning it may be lifted if a new President comes into office.
As we went to press before election day, a shutdown of TikTok in the US – and possibly GoGoKid – was still looming. Court action has delayed a ban on the sale of the app on Apple’s App Store and TikTok was awaiting an export licence from the Beijing authorities that would allow the transfer of a 20 per cent stake in the company to Oracle and Walmart in the US.
