Steven Mnuchin eyeing up TikTok after House passes bill to ban app
Former Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin is said to be gathering a consortium of investors to attempt to take over TikTok as the Chinese owned short-video app comes under increasing scrutiny regarding its foreign ownership in the US.
Mnuchin, who served as Treasury secretary from 2017 to 2021, told CNBC on Thursday that a House-approved bill to ban the app in the US "should pass and I think it should be sold".
“It’s a great business and I’m going to put together a group to buy TikTok," he said, with any deal expected to be valued at more than $100bn.
On Wednesday, US politicians voted overwhelmingly in favour – 352 to 65 – to ban TikTok from operating in the US, moving the bill on to the Senate, on the back of concerns over national security and the alleged potential for political interference.
The fear is that B eijing could hypothetically control what content users see and steer public opinion among its 150m users in the US.
TikTok is currently operated by Beijing-based tech giant ByteDance, but Mnuchin said the app "should be owned by US business". He added: "There's no way that the Chinese would ever let a US company own something like this in China."
A spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry was quoted as saying on Wednesday that the potential ruling "undermines the confidence of international investors in the investment environment, sabotages the normal economic and trade order in the world and will eventually backfire on the US itself".