TikTok sued the US government on Monday, accusing the Trump administration of depriving it of due process when President Trump used his emergency economic powers to issue an executive order that will block the app from doing transactions in the country.

The suit, which was filed in the Federal District Court for the Central District of California, represents TikTok’s most direct challenge to the White House and escalates an increasingly bitter back-and-forth between the popular video app and American officials.

President Trump has repeatedly said that TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese Internet company ByteDance, poses a national security threat because of its Chinese ties. On August 6, he issued an executive order to ban transactions with the app within 45 days. A week later, he issued a separate executive order giving ByteDance 90 days to divest from its American assets and any data that TikTok had gathered in the US.

“We do not take suing the government lightly, however we feel we have no choice but to take action to protect our rights, and the rights of our community and employees,” the company said in its suit. “Our more than 1,500 employees across the US pour their hearts into building this platform every day,”the company said, noting that it planned to hire more than 10,000 more workers across eight states in the coming years.

Relations between the US and China have soured in recent months over rifts in geopolitics, technology and trade. The campaign has been partly provoked by China’s more assertive posture, but also Trump’s desire to convince voters that he is tough on China. His advisers have zeroed in on technology companies, which they say are beholden to the Chinese government through security laws.

New York Times News Service