The United States' clampdown on TikTok, along with President Donald Trump publicly favoring Oracle as the app's potential buyer, is prompting concerns that the competitive landscape and innovation in the US tech industry will be harmed.

Trump on Tuesday told reporters in Arizona that he would support Oracle's buying TikTok, a wildly popular video-sharing sensation owned by Chinese company ByteDance

Trump on Tuesday told reporters in Arizona that he would support Oracle's buying TikTok, a wildly popular video-sharing sensation owned by Chinese company ByteDance.

He called the software giant a "great company" and said it "could handle" owning TikTok. But he declined to say whether he believed Oracle was a better option than Microsoft, the leading contender that has been in negotiations with ByteDance.

"It hurts our innovation because it gives the US firms a false sense of security; they don't need to worry about competing with this other player," said Gary Rieschel, a venture capitalist. "I think it's terrible for venture capital; it's terrible for the overall health of the US market."

TikTok's rapid success has placed it in the crosshairs of the Trump administration, which began scrutinizing the app months ago over national security concerns. Trump has recently issued several executive orders, threatening to ban the app in the US unless it is sold to a new owner by Sept 15.

Trump's support for a potential Oracle bid underscores his close relationship with the tech company, which has spent years building ties with his administration, according to The New York Times. Oracle's executives are political allies of the president. The State Department said on Monday that Oracle was backing its program targeting Chinese telecom companies and apps.

Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison held a Trump fundraiser at his home in February, raising $7 million, The Wall Street Journal reported.

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Another tech giant that's reported to have a special relationship with Trump is Facebook. The company has long been criticized for allowing Trump free rein on the platform in exchange for looser regulation, despite CEO Mark Zuckerberg's denials. Trump's presidential campaign has urged people to sign a petition calling for a ban on TikTok, with ads running on Facebook and its subsidiary app Instagram.

"It's interesting, you don't read much about that but there's a huge lobbying effort and a lot of money being spent by Facebook to try to ban TikTok," Rieschel said.

Though Zuckerberg described his competition with TikTok as an ideological battle, Rieschel said the reason Facebook is "ferociously" trying have TikTok banned is that it has not yet been able to figure out how to compete with it.

Melissa Hathaway, a cybersecurity expert. said: "Those using and adopting TikTok (are) a generation of people that Facebook doesn't have access to and cannot attract. The company (TikTok) has an algorithm that could really bring the power of all the information that Facebook has already collected."

'Kindergarten version'

Facebook has recently shut down Lasso, an app similar to TikTok, to make way for its other TikTok clone, Instagram Reels. But the new app was dismissed by users as "a kindergarten version of TikTok" without professional editing features.

Having failed twice to create a TikTok-like product, Facebook is taking the "block the access to my market" approach, said Hathaway.

Rieschel also noted that TikTok is the first foreign company that has entered the US market and rapidly gained popularity among adolescents.

"They (TikTok) have really cracked the code on some underlying technology," said Rieschel, who lived in China for more than a decade.

READ MORE: Twitter may compete to buy TikTok

Before TikTok achieved widespread popularity in the US, it was formed out of the acquisition by ByteDance of an app called Musical.ly in 2017. The app was initially getting relatively modest traction in the US for young adults to lip-sync to videos and music.

What made TikTok popular was the technological capability within ByteDance that it had perfected with its similar app in China－Douyin－and algorithms better suited to creating more stickiness or addictiveness, Rieschel added.

Agencies via Xinhua contributed to this story.