Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced plans to assemble an investor group to purchase TikTok after the House of Representatives passed a bill requiring Chinese parent company ByteDance to divest.
“I think the legislation should pass and I think it should be sold,” Mnuchin told Squawk Box on Thursday. “It’s a great business and I’m going to put together a group to buy TikTok,” he said.
The bill is now heading to the Senate, where it faces some opposition from “libertarian” senators on the payroll of billionaire TikTok investor Jeffrey Yass, including Rand Paul.
However, it has broad bipartisan support, and even Joe Biden has signaled he is likely to sign the bill if it clears the upper chamber.
Mnuchin served under the Trump administration, which took action against TikTok over data security concerns. National Pulse reporter William Upton, who worked at the Treasury at the same time as Mnuchin, has explained the current bill is “exactly what we wanted.”
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