US Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin arrives for the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Hearings to examine implementation of Title I of the CARES Act on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC on June 10, 2020. (Photo by KEVIN DIETSCH / POOL / AFP) (Photo by KEVIN DIETSCH/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
Steve Mnuchin, the former US Treasury Secretary, has disclosed his intention to acquire the well-known video-sharing app TikTok.
The announcement comes after the bill passed by the House of Representatives on Wednesday, that seeks to ban the app due to national security concerns, unless its parent company, ByteDance, based in China, divests from its US operations.
On Thursday’s CNBC business programme, Squawk Box, Mnuchin—an investment banker who worked under former US President Donald Trump from 2017 to 2021, discussed his plans for TikTok. But as of right now, ByteDance hasn’t expressed any plan to sell the app.
“It’s a great business, and I’m going to put together a group to buy TikTok,” Mnuchin explained.
“This should be owned by US businesses. There’s no way that the Chinese would ever let a US company own something like this in China.”
Mnuchin’s proposals wouldn’t be the first to try to give the US government power over TikTok. In 2020, Trump supported a proposed deal that would have led to the app being acquired by the tech company Oracle and the retailer Walmart, to form a U.S based enterprise.
Melissa Enoch
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