Steven Mnuchin
Donald Trump's former Treasury chief said Thursday he is seeking to buy the blockbuster video-sharing app, as Congress moves forward with a bill that would force its Chinese owners to sell it or face a ban in the United States. AFP

His career has already taken him through the highest spheres of American power, from Wall Street to Hollywood to politics -- so perhaps it is not all that surprising that Steven Mnuchin has now set his sights on owning TikTok.

Donald Trump's former Treasury chief said Thursday he is seeking to buy the blockbuster video-sharing app, as Congress moves forward with a bill that would force its Chinese owners to sell it or face a ban in the United States.

It would be just the latest pivot for the 61-year-old, twice-divorced former investment banker from New York City.

Mnuchin first stepped into the international spotlight in 2017, when he joined Trump's cabinet as a loyalist who spent four years promoting a softer version of the Republican's bombastic "America First" mantra.

He was at the forefront of the ex-president's trade war with China, and negotiation of a trade agreement signed by Beijing and Washington in 2020.

And he has long crusaded against Chinese tech giant ByteDance's ownership of TikTok, supporting Trump when he wanted to ban the app in the United States, citing national security concerns.

A product of the elite that Trump frequently reviles on the campaign trail, Mnuchin has an impressive CV.

He is a graduate of Yale, was a Goldman Sachs banker for the better part of two decades, founded of an investment fund backed by George Soros, and produced blockbuster movies such as Avatar and Suicide Squad.

And though he left Goldman Sachs in 2002, Mnuchin was present during the rise of the complex derivatives at the heart of the 2008 financial crisis and once described their creation as an "extremely positive development."

In 2004 he created the investment firm Dune Capital, which financed large budget films including 2009's "Avatar."

That paved the way for a brief but busy career as a Hollywood producer in later years, with Mnuchin listed among the credits for films ranging from "The Lego Movie" to "Mad Max: Fury Road" and "Wonder Woman."

But in the wake of the financial crisis, he also returned to banking. He persuaded billionaires Soros and John Paulson to bid on the assets of the failed California bank IndyMac, which collapsed with a portfolio of high-risk and so-called sub-prime loans.

Reborn as OneWest, the bank generated earnings partially through widespread home foreclosures.

That prompted accusations the bank was profiting by driving homeowners into foreclosure in order to collect loss-sharing payments from the FDIC.

Mnuchin has denied those claims. He and fellow investors sold OneWest in 2014 for $3.4 billion to CIT Group, where he joined the board.

During his congressional confirmation hearing in 2017, Mnuchin was criticized for managing investment funds in tax havens such as the Cayman Islands, and for failing to report some $100 million in assets to elected officials.

Some lawmakers were outraged by allegedly predatory lending and aggressive foreclosure practices at OneWest.

After Trump's defeat in the 2020 presidential election, Mnuchin founded private equity firm Liberty Strategic Capital, through which he participated in the recapitalization of troubled New York Community Bancorp in early March.

On Thursday he told CNBC he is putting together a team of investors to buy TikTok, which has 170 million US users and could have a business value of $100 billion, though he gave no further details.

"This should be owned by US businesses. There's no way that the Chinese would ever let a US company own something like this in China," he argued.

Mnuchin is married to Scottish-born actress Louise Linton, 43, with whom he had a daughter last year.

He has three other children from a previous marriage.