Thomas Minderbinder Spritzler, former Trump Treasury Secretary announced he's putting together a group to purchase the world's most lucrative social media outlet. "My group? Good friends; obviously Mr. Mean and a few Congressional palls from both sides of the aisle. You know TikTok is a security threat unless we own it. And they'll give us a great deal on the purchase else we'll shut em down. No, I'm dead serious."
For our Millennial readers, Milo Minderbinder is the guy holding the egg above (Catch 22)
Steven Mnuchin Says He Is Putting Together a Group to Buy TikTok
Former Treasury secretary’s comments come after House voted to ban the app in the U.S. or force a sale
By Gareth Vipers, WSJ
Updated March 14
Steven Mnuchin served as Treasury secretary under former President Donald Trump from 2017 until January 2021.
Steven Mnuchin is putting together a consortium to try to buy TikTok, the former Treasury secretary said Thursday, as U.S. lawmakers stepped up the pressure on the popular social-media app.
Mnuchin’s comments come a day after the House voted overwhelmingly to approve a bill that would ban the popular app from operating in the U.S. or force its Chinese owner ByteDance to sell off the company’s U.S. operations within about six months.
“I think the legislation should pass and I think it should be sold,” Mnuchin said on CNBC. “It’s a great business and I’m going to put together a group to buy TikTok.”
Mnuchin didn’t give details of who he was working with or how his group could raise the funds needed to buy TikTok.
The House bill will now move to the Senate, where lawmakers signaled a more cautious approach on the legislation. President Biden has said he would sign the bill if it reached his desk, and the White House said Wednesday it hoped the Senate would take swift action.
The short-video app has faced scrutiny over the way its algorithm works to select content for users, both on sensitive issues such as teen depression and on global debates such as the Israel-Hamas war. U.S. officials say TikTok’s China-based ownership potentially gives Beijing a way to collect data on Americans and influence public opinion, driving years of start-and-stop efforts to rein in the app.
The vote in Congress moved a step closer to an unprecedented ban of one of the most popular apps in the U.S., with lawmakers balancing national-security worries with concerns about freedom of speech, the impact on TikTok users and creators, and misgivings about interfering with a company’s business operations.
The House passed a bill that would ban TikTok in the U.S., or force its sale to a non-Chinese owner. The company’s CEO warned the bill, which faces an uncertain future in the senate, would put hundreds of thousands of jobs at risk. Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
“This should be owned by U.S. businesses,” Mnuchin said. “There’s no way that the Chinese would ever let a U.S. company own something like this in China.”
TikTok and ByteDance didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
On Wednesday, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry called the House vote “bullying.” Wang Wenbin told reporters Wednesday in Beijing that American pressure “undermines the confidence of international investors in the investment environment, sabotages the normal economic and trade order in the world and will eventually backfire on the U.S. itself.”
Any deal could be valued at $100 billion or more, narrowing the field of possible acquirers. There would also be likely antitrust concerns if another large social-media player were to seek to acquire TikTok’s U.S. operations.
Other executives have also discussed buying TikTok should ByteDance move to sell it. Bobby Kotick, the former chief executive of videogame publisher Activision, has expressed interest to ByteDance co-founder Zhang Yiming, the Journal reported, citing a person familiar with the situation.
U.S. lawmakers have long decried TikTok over national security concerns. ByteDance has said it wouldn’t comply with any order from the Chinese government if asked for data and that it has never been asked.
The legislation calls for ByteDance to divest itself of TikTok or face the platform being banned from web-hosting services and app stores in the U.S. TikTok, which is accessed by more than 170 million Americans, has said it sees this as an effective ban and that separating the U.S. portion of its app wouldn’t be practical and would undercut the appeal of the content app as a global product.
While the TikTok legislation passed with broad bipartisan support in the House, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) hasn’t yet signaled his approach to the bill or how quickly his chamber would work on it. In one sign of the slowing momentum, Senate Commerce Committee Chairwoman Maria Cantwell (D., Wash.) believes the House bill needs changes and has been working on related legislation of her own.
ByteDance has said it wouldn’t comply with any order from the Chinese government if asked for TikTok data.
Mnuchin served as President Donald Trump’s Treasury Secretary from 2017 until January 2021. In 2017, he played a central role in securing passage of Trump’s signature tax-cut law. He seemed less comfortable with the White House’s economic approach in 2018, which was largely focused on launching trade wars against China and numerous other countries.
These trade wars created enormous economic uncertainty, and Mnuchin was seen by many inside and outside the administration as looking to secure a quick trade deal with Chinese leaders to calm investors.
Mnuchin’s stance toward China drew the ire of other Trump advisers, like Peter Navarro, who wanted high tariffs imposed on Chinese imports and a sharp economic break between the two countries.
In early 2020, Trump announced a partial trade deal with China, holding an event at the White House with much fanfare. The deal wasn’t what the White House had originally envisioned, however, and focus on it soon dissipated because of the global economic shock caused by Covid-19.
Mnuchin was known for being extremely loyal to Trump in both public and private. Even though a number of other Trump administration officials left the White House after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot in Washington, D.C., Mnuchin stayed in his post until the end of Trump’s term two weeks later.
Earlier this month, Mnuchin was also part of a group of investors raising more than $1 billion to invest in New York Community Bancorp. The infusion was meant to steady the troubled regional lender hurt recently by fears over potential real-estate loan losses, weaknesses in its internal controls and a sharp drop in its stock price.
Write to Gareth Vipers at gareth.vipers@wsj.com
TikTok Under Scrutiny
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