Image by Charles Deluvio

Trump Causes Problems For Some Casino Operators In His Last Days In Office

Article by : Helen Jan 22, 2021

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While dealing with protestors in the White House and planning the last moves as the President of the United States, Donald Trump has recently issued an executive order that is about to cause some troubles for many US corporations operating across Asia. According to the order, eight major Asian payment applications will be banned, and any US-based company or individual will be prohibited from using those apps. Many US casino operators have their properties in Macau and other Asian territories, so that they are likely to face trouble with maintaining their business activities. Las Vegas Sands, MGM Resorts International, and Wynn Resorts are the greatest US casino operators affected by the ban, and now, they are trying to figure out what to do next.

Amid the deteriorating relationship between the United States and China, President Trump decided to prohibit AliPay, WeChat Pay, and 6 other Asian payment platforms often used by US gamblers. The order also requires the payment platforms to remove their App Store and Google Play applications in the US market. The President claims that many of those Asian applications are collecting sensitive information of US residents, which can be potentially used for growing the Asian economy.

The continuing activity of the PRC and the CCP to steal or otherwise obtain the United States persons’ data makes clear that there is an intent to use bulk data collection to advance China’s economic and national security agenda.

The ban will come into force in 45 days after publishing the executive order when Donald Trump will no longer be in office. There are still great chances that the ban won’t come into force at all since President-elect Joe Biden will be inaugurated and will have the power to reverse the executive orders issued by the former President. The ban will also be most likely contested in the court, just like the previous one that was supposed to prohibit TikTok and WeChat in August 2020. Citing national security concerns, Donald Trump wanted to ban TikTok across all the states. More than that, the President wanted ByteDance, the company that owns TikTok, to sell its American business to Microsoft within a short period of time. In response, the Chinese company threatened legal action against the United States. The executive order was eventually blocked by the federal court after not that long discussions.

WeChat and other similar platforms are frequently used by the Macau casino operators to maintain their normal operations, so without any doubt, there will be a lot of resistance to the ban. David Sisk, the chief operating officer for Melco Resorts & Entertainment’s Macau Resorts, claims that WeChat is the primary way of communication for millions of people, so banning it doesn’t make any sense.

Trump has already issued a number of executive orders banning various Chinese companies claiming they are sharing sensitive data with the Chinese authorities. Even the telecom giant Huawei was on the blacklist. Anyway, the recently-issued executive order won’t come into force for at least another month, which gives Joe Biden enough time and opportunities to get things back under control again. Meanwhile, there seems to be little to no US companies that rush to follow all the order provisions. Instead, all of them prefer to wait until cooler heads prevail.