Former US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he was assembling a group of investors to try to buy Tik Tok after the House of Representatives passed a bill Wednesday that would force the social network to split from its parent company in China or else risk being banned in the US.

“I think the bill should pass, and I think it should be sold,” Mnuchin said on CNBC this Thursday. It’s a big business and I’m going to start a group to buy TikTok. added the former Treasury Secretary in the Donald Trump administration.

However, Mnuchin did not specify who the other investors in the said agreement would be, as well as the potential valuation of this popular social network.

That bill on TikTok, a platform with 170 million U.S. users, now heads to the Senate, where its future is uncertain, although President Joe Biden’s administration has signaled it would sign the legislation if it passes.

Mnuchin said TikTok should be owned by an American company.

“The Chinese would never allow an American company to own something like this in China,” Mnuchin reasoned.

This is not the first high-profile deal Mnuchin has been involved in since leaving the Trump administration, as last week Mnuchin’s Liberty Strategic Capital was the lead investor in raising $1 billion to stabilize New York Community Bancorp.

Former President Trump (2017-2021) once tried to ban TikTok due to the threat of this “national security” network, but this measure ended up in court and was annulled by current President Joe Biden without the law coming into force.

At that time, ByteDance was negotiating with Microsoft to sell part of the company.

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Since then, Trump changed his mind and spoke out against the TikTok ban.

From my side. Millionaire investor Kevin O’Leary, known as one of the judges on the TV show “Shark Tank”, told Fox this Monday that if the US vetoed it, he would also be interested in buying the platform.

EFE