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Former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said on CNBC on on Thursday that he is putting together a group of investors to acquire ByteDance’s (BDNCE) TikTok.
“I think the legislation should pass and I think it should be sold,” Mnuchin said in an interview. “It’s a great business and I’m going to put together a group to buy TikTok.”
“This should be owned by U.S. businesses,” Mnuchin added. ”There’s no way that the Chinese would ever let a U.S. company own something like this in China.”
Mnuchin did not disclose who would be part of the group to acquire the social network.
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Seeking Alpha about Mnuchin’s comments.
Video platform Rumble (RUM) expressed interest this week in joining a group of other parties to buy and operate TikTok in the U.S. if ByteDance were to divest its ownership.
ByteDance denied reports earlier this week that it had been approached by a U.S. business executive for a potential deal to acquire the short video platform.
Political implications
Mnuchin’s comments come one day after the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bipartisan bill that, if ultimately approved, would force ByteDance to sell its U.S. operations of TikTok or face a nationwide ban for the app used by over 150M Americans.
The bill, titled the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act,” was passed by a vote of 352 to 65, with 197 Republicans and 155 Democrats in favor.
The banning or severely restricting TikTok in the U.S. could have wide ranging political consequences and views vary by political party.
President Biden has said that if Congress passes a bill to ban TikTok, he will sign it.
Former President Donald Trump, who is the presumed Republican nominee, said this week he fears banning TikTok would only empower Meta Platforms’ (META) Facebook further.
“Without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger, and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people,” Trump said on CNBC earlier this week.
Other rivals of TikTok include YouTube Shorts (GOOG) (GOOGL) and Instagram Reels.
The Chinese government responded to the House passing the bill and accused Washington of “resorting to acts of bullying.”
“Though the U.S. has never found any evidence of TikTok posing a threat to U.S. national security, it has never stopped going after TikTok,” said Wang Wenbin, spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“Such practice of resorting to hegemonic moves when one could not succeed in fair competition disrupts the normal operation of businesses, undermines the confidence of international investors in the investment environment, and sabotages the normal economic and trade order in the world,” Wenbin continued. “This will inevitably come back to backfire on the United States itself.”
The fate of the bill in the Senate is seen as “uncertain,” though any potential action could wind up having broader implications, Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said.
“While there are many questions around its ultimate path in the Senate and if this bill ever sees an actual vote, yesterday’s actions in our view represents a very slippery slope around social media restrictions, First Amendment rights, and potential retaliatory actions China can head towards the likes of Apple (AAPL) and Tesla (TSLA) and US Big Tech,” Ives wrote in an investor note.
Seeking Alpha’s Yoel Minkoff, Ravikash Bakolia, Vansh Agarwal and Anuron Mitra contributed to this story.
(This story has been updated to include Mnuchin’s comments.)
