Former US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is organizing a group of investors to buy Tiktok. The short video app must belong to an American company, Mnuchin said on Thursday on the business broadcaster CNBC. However, Tiktok should not come under the control of the large American tech companies because that could be problematic in terms of competition law. Rather, Tiktok must remain a real competitor for them. However, the app would have to be reprogrammed in the USA using US technology.
There is currently a bill in the US Congress that could lead to Tiktok being banned from American app stores if the app remains owned by the Bytedance Group. Bytedance is seen in the USA as a Chinese company, but the company itself counters this by pointing out that it is 60 percent owned by Western investors and that its headquarters are on the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean.
After the bill passed the House of Representatives in an expedited procedure, a longer examination is looming in the Senate, the second chamber of Congress. US President Joe Biden has already made it clear that he would sign the law. Bytedance would then have almost half a year to separate from Tiktok before the app would be removed from the download platforms. The deadline is sometimes criticized as being too short. Mnuchin, however, said: “I think you can accomplish a lot in six months.” At the same time, he emphasized that the app was popular and should not be shut down: “The users love it.”
Before the presidential election in November, both Biden’s Democrats and Donald Trump’s Republicans are aware that they can reach important young voters via Tiktok. Mnuchin said his intention was to bring on board a range of investors, none of whom would control the service alone. As Trump’s Treasury Secretary, he was also responsible for the committee that dealt with foreign investment in the United States. Mnuchin said he also had access to information about Tiktok that he could not speak about publicly. “Let’s just say that if you have this app on everyone’s phones, it can collect incredible amounts of data,” he said simply. Mnuchin is currently the head of the financial investor Liberty Strategic Capital.