Former Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin announced during a March 14 interview that he is putting together a group of investors to submit a bid for the acquisition of social media platform TikTok.
This comes one day after the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act passed the House of Representatives by an overwhelming vote of 352–65. The legislation could prohibit the Chinese-controlled social media app in the United States unless it is sold to a U.S.-based owner.
“It’s a great business, and I’m going to put together a group to buy TikTok,” Mr. Mnuchin said in an interview on CNBC on the morning of March 14.
He said that he would allow existing investors in the United States to roll over their holdings in TikTok. He also asserted that no one entity would have more than 10 percent control. However, Mr. Mnuchin avoided naming any of the members of the team that he was assembling, saying only, “I’ve spoken to a bunch of people.”
The former treasury secretary had some thoughts on how TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, and Beijing would respond to a similar situation.
“There’s no way that the Chinese would ever let a U.S. company own something like this in China,” he said.
Mr. Mnuchin claimed that he has seen evidence that having TikTok on one’s phone provides the app with the potential to “collect an awful lot of data,” according to information that he received while working in the Trump administration.
Speaking to the possibility of another U.S.-based tech company buying the app, he said: “I don’t think this should be controlled by any of the big U.S. tech companies. I think there could be antitrust issues on that.”
Former President Donald Trump made a similar statement on March 11, just days before the legislation passed the House. He said he was convinced that there was a national security threat related to TikTok’s app but was concerned that an all-out ban could favor rivals such as Facebook.
In an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” when asked if he considers TikTok a threat to national security, President Trump responded: “I do believe that.
“I do believe it, and we have to very much admit we are protecting American people’s privacy and data rights.”
The former president expressed concern that banning TikTok would lead to the growth of Facebook, which he asserted is the “enemy of the people.”
“There’s a lot of good, and there’s a lot of bad with TikTok. But the thing I don’t like is that without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger, and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people along with a lot of the media,” he said.
Other leaders in the upper chamber of Congress were more enthusiastic about passing the legislation, however, with Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Vice Chairman Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) praising the House and urging their body of Congress to take action.
“We were encouraged by today’s strong bipartisan vote in the House of Representatives, and look forward to working together to get this bill passed through the Senate and signed into law.”
