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The former Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, Steven Mnuchin, surprised by revealing that he wants to gather investors to buy TikTok, the Chinese social network that is in the crosshairs of the Government of Joe Biden and the United States Congress, where a bill is advancing to that the application is sold or that it is finally banned in that country.

A day before this news broke, the House of Representatives had approved by a large majority a bill that would force TikTok to separate from its parent company in China, the Chinese technology giant ByteDance, or risk the application being banned in the United States. Joined. Now the rule will be debated and voted on in the Senate, where it is not known what may happen.

President Biden has announced that if Congress finally approves the so-called Protect Americans from Applications Controlled by Foreign Adversaries Act, he will sign it.

In this context, Steven Mnuchin, who was Secretary of the Treasury during the government of Republican Donald Trump, announced that he is preparing a plan to purchase TikTok, the popular short video application.

“I think the legislation should be passed and I think it should be sold,” Mnuchin told CNBC. He assured that Tiktok is “a big business and (…) should be owned by American companies.”

Mnuchin did not provide details on who else would be included in the group of investors he plans to form, nor on the possible monetary valuation of TikTok.

The AP agency recalled that in 2020 Mnuchin was an intermediary in an agreement that would have seen American corporations Oracle and Walmart obtain a large stake in TikTok for national security reasons.

The 2020 deal was made in response to then-President Donald Trump’s series of executive actions aimed at banning TikTok in the United States. But the sale never prospered for several reasons. While Trump’s executive orders ended up in court as the 2020 presidential election approached.

Who is Steven Mnuchin?

At this point, it is necessary to know who Steven Terner Mnuchin is.

Born December 21, 1962, he is an American banker, film producer and former hedge fund manager who became the 77th United States Secretary of the Treasury.

After graduating from Yale University in 1985, Mnuchin worked for investment bank Goldman Sachs for 17 years, eventually becoming its chief information officer.

After leaving Goldman Sachs in 2002, he worked at several hedge funds and founded others.

During the 2007-2008 financial crisis, Mnuchin bought residential lender IndyMac, which was renamed OneWest Bank, and rebuilt it. He later sold it to CIT Group in 2015.

Mnuchin joined Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016 and was named the campaign’s national finance chair.

Before joining Trump’s campaign, Mnuchin had been involved in politics only as a donor. Between 1995 and 2014, he donated more than $120,000 to political organizations, PACs, politicians and political parties, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

His contributions to candidates included 11 donations that went to Republicans and 36 donations that went to Democrats. The campaigns of Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney were among those to whom she donated money. Mnuchin said most of those donations were favors for friends.

Between June and September 2016, Mnuchin donated more than $400,000 to the Republican Party, including donations to Paul Ryan and Donald Trump.

Once Trump won the election, on February 13, 2017, the Senate confirmed Mnuchin as United States Secretary of the Treasury by a vote of 53 to 47.

How much is TikTok worth?

If the US Senate passes the bill, ByteDance would have to sell the app to a US company within six months. Otherwise, TikTok could be banned in the United States.

TikTok was launched to the world in 2018 by the Chinese company ByteDance

While Mnuchin has not mentioned a value for TikTok, there are some clues that give an idea of ​​what the social network that has 1.562 million monthly active users around the world could cost. In the United States, 148 million people use the app.

In 2000, the Bloomberg agency reported that ByteDance had set the price of TikTok at $60 billion. Those were the times when Donald Trump’s government was pressuring the Chinese state company to get rid of the application.

According to the blog of the specialized site Hootsuite, TikTok would be worth $50 billion in 2024. But The Wall Street Journal estimates that it is more and speaks of hundreds of billions of dollars.

File photo dated September 21, 2020 shows a generic illustration of a cell phone with the Chinese internet media app TikTok and an American flag. (EFE/ Roman Pilipey ARCHIVE).
Why does the US want to ban TikTok?

TikTok belongs to the Chinese technology giant ByteDance, supposedly subordinate to the Chinese Communist Party.

The New York Times explained that legislators and regulators in the United States and other Western countries have increasingly expressed concern that TikTok and ByteDance could put users’ personal data, such as user information, in the hands of the Chinese government. location.

The concerns are based on laws that allow the Chinese government to secretly request data from Chinese companies and citizens for intelligence operations.

They are also concerned that China could use TikTok’s content recommendations to spread misinformation, a concern that has increased in the United States during the war between Israel and Hamas, indicates the NYT.

TikTok has always denied these allegations and has attempted to distance itself from ByteDance.

Which countries have banned TikTok?

In mid-2020, India banned the platform, costing ByteDance one of its largest markets. According to the New York Times, the Indian government alleged that that and 58 other Chinese apps secretly transmitted user data to servers outside India.

Other countries and government bodies such as the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, the European Union, France and New Zealand have banned the application on official devices.

In the United States, more than two dozen states have banned TikTok on government devices. Many universities have blocked it on campus wireless networks, but students often simply use cell phone data to use the app.

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