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- Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin wants to buy TikTok.
- Mnuchin, unlike Trump, supports bipartisan legislation that could ban the popular app.
- The House overwhelmingly passed the potential ban on Wednesday, though it faces an uncertain future.
Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Thursday that he's exploring assembling a group of investors to purchase TikTok, an attempt to assuage US national security concerns that the popular social media app should not be under Chinese ownership.
"I understand the technology. It's a great business, and I'm going to put together a great group to buy TikTok," Mnuchin said during an interview on CNBC's "Squawk Box."
While he declined to provide any specific names, Mnuchin said that his group would be organized in a way "so that no one investor controls this."
Mnuchin, breaking with former President Donald Trump, said he supported a House bill that could force a ban on the popular social media app. Like his former boss, Mnuchin said that he would not want to see a divestment strengthen the position of TikTok's competitors.
"I don't think this should be controlled by any of the big US tech companies, I think there could be big antitrust issues on that," Mnuchin said. "It should be something that is independent so that we have a real competitor. And users love it, so it shouldn't be shut down."
Lawmakers passed the legislation on an overwhelming 352 to 65 vote. The bill now faces an uncertain future in the US Senate, despite President Joe Biden pledging to sign it into law if Congress were to pass it. The legislation would require ByteDance, TikTok's Beijing-based parent company, to divest its US TikTok operations to another company within 180 days. While the bill explicitly mentions TikTok, the legislation could also apply to future companies.
It's far from certain a sale will ever happen. First, the legislation must become law. TikTok is almost certain to turn the debate into a legal fight, much like it did when the Trump administration kicked off the discussion on banning the app. Even if legal challenges are exhausted, China has shown it is very protective of ByteDance. Beijing implemented export controls in 2020 that were considered to be a move to complicate the sale of any of ByteDance's technology to a US-based company. China would likely throw up similar barriers again.
Mnuchin's comments underline the competing interests in the former president's orbit. Trump's White House, led in part by Mnuchin, kicked off the US effort to ban the social media app. Trump is now opposed to a ban, a flip after the former president met with Jeff Yass, a US billionaire, who controls a major stake in ByteDance. The former president said he and Yass did not talk about the app. According to Politico, former Trump White House official Kellyanne Conway is being paid by the conservative Club for Growth to advocate for the app as Congress renews its efforts to ban it.
Like other current and former officials, Mnuchin hinted at potentially classified information that increases his fear about letting TikTok remain under the umbrella of a Chinese company.
"It is an issue for this to be on everybody's phone," Mnuchin said. "There are certain things I can talk about that are obvious, and there are certain things I can't talk about that I had access to. But let's just say, when you have this app on everybody's phone, it has the ability to collect an awful lot of data."