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Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Thursday formed a group of investors to buy TikTok in an attempt to allay U.S. national security concerns that the popular social media app should not be under Chinese ownership. He said he is considering it.
“I understand technology. This is a great business. I’m going to put together a great group to buy TikTok,” Mnuchin said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
Mnuchin did not name specifics, but said his group would be organized in a way that “no investor controls it.”
Mnuchin broke with former President Donald Trump and said he supports a House bill that could force a ban on popular social media apps. Mnuchin, like his former boss, said he didn’t want the sale to strengthen the position of TikTok’s competitors.
“I don’t think this should be controlled by the big American tech companies. I think there could be major antitrust issues with this,” Mnuchin said. “It should be independent so there is real competition. And users love it, so it shouldn’t be shut down.”
Lawmakers passed the bill by an overwhelming vote of 352-65. The bill now faces an uncertain future in the U.S. Senate, even though President Joe Biden has promised to sign the bill into law if Congress passes it. The bill would require Beijing-based TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell its U.S. TikTok operations to another company within 180 days. Although the bill explicitly mentions TikTok, the bill could also apply to future companies.
Secretary Mnuchin’s comments highlight the competing interests in the former president’s trajectory. The Trump White House, partly led by Secretary Mnuchin, has launched a U.S. effort to ban social media apps. President Trump currently opposes the ban, but that changed following the former president’s meeting with Jeff Yas, the American billionaire who controls a major stake in ByteDance. The former president said he and Yas did not talk about the app. According to Politicoformer Trump White House official Kellyanne Conway has been paid by the conservative Growth Club to advocate for the app as Congress renews efforts to ban it.
Like other current and former officials, Mnuchin hinted at the possibility of classified information, raising concerns about leaving TikTok under the control of a Chinese company.
“It’s a problem that this is going to be on everyone’s cell phone,” Mnuchin said. “Sometimes I can talk about the obvious stuff, and sometimes I can’t talk about it because I had access to it. But let me tell you, when this app is on everyone’s phone, it has the ability to collect data. Huge amount. That’s a huge amount of data.”