Asia Tech Wire (July 17) -- U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has said in an interview that he has no plans to block TikTok, but will instead support it to compete with Facebook.

In late June, Trump gave an exclusive interview to Bloomberg Businessweek at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida.

He said in the interview that he didn't want to hurt U.S. tech companies and would give preference to domestic companies over foreign ones, with one exception - TikTok.

The short-form video app has been facing a "sell or ban" dilemma in the U.S. because Washington suspects that TikTok's Chinese owner, ByteDance, may be sharing user data with Beijing.

Trump spoke of his support for TikTok at the time. He noted that blocking TikTok in the U.S. would benefit a company and CEO that he would not want to reward.

"But now [that] I'm thinking about it, I'm for TikTok because you need competition," Trump said. "If you don't have TikTok, you have Facebook and Instagram, and that's, you know, that's Zuckerberg."

For Trump, having to use only Zuckerberg's products is an outcome he can't stand.

On January 6, 2021, the U.S. Capitol was stormed by Trump supporters. Subsequently, Facebook blocked Trump's account indefinitely.

TikTok, which has more than 170 million users in the U.S., has become a battleground for both parties in the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

As a presidential candidate, Trump has shown a much different attitude toward TikTok than when he was president.

In 2020, then-President Trump signed an executive order banning TikTok, which then sued the Trump administration and eventually defused the crisis.