WASHINGTON • Former Vice President Mike Pence said the U.S. should ban TikTok, calling it a platform that allowed China to obtain data on Americans without knowledge.

“We ought to be banning TikTok. TikTok is a platform for the Chinese Communist government. They are collecting data on Americans every single day,” Pence, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, said Friday in an interview. “Young Americans need to know that their privacy is being compromised.”

Pence’s comments come before a policy speech he will deliver Monday on China. Pence delivered a jab at one of his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.

“I know that one of my competitors, Vivek Ramaswamy in the Republican primary, he had rightly described TikTok as a digital fentanyl for American youth, and this week he signed up for TikTok. He said he’d met with one of their executives and they changed his mind,” Pence said. “Well, they are never going to change my mind.”