Former US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on May 2, 2023 in Beverly Hills, California (AFP / Patrick T. Fallon)
Former US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Thursday he wanted to bring together a group of investors to buy the social network TikTok, while the United States Congress could push its parent company, the Chinese ByteDance, to sell it.
“It’s a great company. I’m going to put together a group to buy TikTok,” said the former Republican minister in Donald Trump’s government (2017-2021), “because [la plateforme] should be controlled by American interests.
“I spoke to several people” about this project, said the former head of the investment bank Goldman Sachs, nevertheless refusing to reveal names.
The House of Representatives adopted a text on Wednesday which, in the event of a favorable vote in the Senate and promulgation by American President Joe Biden, would force ByteDance to sell TikTok, under penalty of banning the video sharing network in the United States.
The proposed law would require ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, to sell the app within 180 days or it would be barred from Apple and Google’s app stores in the United States.
The outcome of the vote in the Senate, however, appears uncertain. Chuck Schumer, leader of the Democrats in the upper house, who have a majority with the support of three independent senators, refused to take a position on the text.
The elected officials who voted for the bill, from the Republican and Democratic camps, are concerned about the use by the Chinese authorities of the social network, either to exploit the data of American users or to try to make propaganda on the platform.
TikTok has systematically refuted these accusations, ensuring that it would refuse any possible request for access by the Chinese government.
– “Thug methods” –
China denounced Thursday “thug methods” after the vote in the House of Representatives on Wednesday.
Wang Wenbin, a spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, August 8, 2022 in Beijing (AFP / Noel Celis)
“If a so-called pretext of national security can be used to arbitrarily exclude successful companies from other countries, then there is no longer any fairness or justice,” Wang Wenbin, a door -spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“When someone sees a good thing belonging to another person and wants to take it from them, these are definitely thug methods,” he added.
“The text voted on in the American House of Representatives goes against the principle of fair competition and international rules on economics and trade,” said Wang Wenbin.
“The United States must (…) stop pressure intended to unfairly exclude foreign companies” from their market, declared a spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, warning that China “would take all measures necessary” to defend its businesses.
He did not specify what these measures could consist of.
Shortly before the official Chinese reaction, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew appealed to American users of the application.
“Make yourself heard,” he said on TikTok and on X (formerly Twitter) after the vote, less than eight months before the November presidential election.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew during a hearing at the US Senate on January 31, 2024 in Washington (AFP / ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS)
“We will not stop defending you and we will continue to do everything in our power, including exercising our legal rights, to protect this amazing platform we have built with you,” he added.
The leader estimated that the law endangered “300,000 jobs” in the United States, threatening in particular to deprive “small businesses that depend on TikTok” of “billions of dollars” in revenue.
Before Steven Mnuchin’s exit, no potential buyer had, until then, officially expressed interest in the social network which claims 170 million users in the United States.
The Wall Street Journal nevertheless reported that the former boss of video game publisher Activision Blizzard, Bobby Kotick, had expressed his interest to the co-founder of ByteDance, Zhang Yiming.
The value of TikTok is difficult to estimate, especially in the case of a forced sale. In 2020, ByteDance had set its price at $60 billion when the government of Donald Trump wanted to force it to part with it, according to the Bloomberg agency.
After leaving the US government, Steven Mnuchin founded a private equity firm, Liberty Strategic Capital, with a particular interest in the technology sector.
It quickly raised $2.5 billion from investors, according to the New York Times, including part from Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds.
Liberty recently broadened its scope by recapitalizing, with a group of investors, the ailing American regional credit institution New York Community Bancorp to the tune of $1.05 billion.