2024-03-15 20:59:10
The former US Secretary of the Treasury during the presidency of Donald Trump indicated this Thursday that he wants to gather investors to buy TikTok, in the midst of a dispute with China after the approval in the House of Representatives of a bill that could ban the application.
The short video application is one of the most popular social networks in the world. But the fact that it belongs to the Chinese technology giant ByteDance, supposedly subordinate to the Chinese Communist Party, worries Western powers.
The lower house of Congress on Wednesday approved by a large majority a bill that would force TikTok to separate from its parent company in China or risk the app being banned in the country.
Steve Mnuchin, the former Treasury Secretary in the Republican administration of former President Donald Trump, announced this Thursday that he is preparing a purchase plan.
“I think the legislation should be passed and I think it should be sold,” Mnuchin told CNBC, ensuring that Tiktok is “a big business and (…) should be owned by American companies.”
The bill still has to pass the US Senate, where the outcome is uncertain.
From China, where the video application is not available, authorities accused the United States of acting with the “logic of a criminal” and of preventing an “open, fair, equitable and non-discriminatory” environment for foreign companies.
“The United States should respect the principles of a market economy and fair competition, and stop unfairly suppressing foreign companies,” said Commerce Ministry spokesman He Yadong.
For his part, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Wang Wenbin, denounced that the vote “goes against the principles of fair competition and international economic and trade standards.”
“If so-called national security reasons can be used to arbitrarily suppress excellent companies from other countries, then there is no fairness or justice at all,” Wang said.
“When someone sees something good that another person has and tries to take it for themselves, we are facing the logic of a criminal,” he said.
However, the United States ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, described as “extremely ironic” the position of Beijing, which blocks Western social networks such as Facebook and X in its territory and exercises strong censorship on the Internet.
“I find it extremely ironic that government representatives in China (…) have criticized the United States for the debate we are currently having over TikTok,” he said.
“It doesn’t even make TikTok available to 1.4 billion Chinese,” he replied.
– Unknown about the Senate vote –
US lawmakers approved the bill by 352 votes in favor and 65 against, a rare show of unity in a closely divided chamber.
For its part, the White House confirmed that if it is finally approved, President Joe Biden will sign the law, officially known as the Protecting Americans from Requests Controlled by Foreign Adversaries Act.
It is unclear, however, how the Senate will vote, where some lawmakers are cautious about taking drastic measures against an application that has 170 million users in the United States.
TikTok has always denied being under the control of the Communist Party. Its executive president, Shou Zi Chew, even urged users to speak out against the vote and several content creators on TikTok consulted by AFP expressed their opposition to the law.
The application has long been at the center of tensions between China and the United States, which clash over technological, trade and human rights issues.
European regulators are also concerned and the European Commission asked TikTok and other platforms such as Facebook, Google and especially in the face of electoral processes.
Also on Thursday, Italy’s competition authority fined TikTok 10 million euros (nearly $11 million) for failing to sufficiently protect minors.
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© Agence France-Presse