Steven Mnuchin announced he is putting together a group to buy TikTok

The former Treasury Secretary is the latest to announce his bid for TikTok, a sale that is not for the faint of heart

Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced Thursday morning that he is putting together a consortium of U.S. investors to buy TikTok. The potential acquisition would involve many hurdles.

His announcement followed the approval of a House bill on Wednesday that requires ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, to divest the social media app within six months. If it is not acquired by a U.S. party within that timeline, the House decided the app will no longer be available to American users.

Mnuchin’s announcement is the newest development in his long push to either force a sale or ban TikTok in the U.S. that tracks back to his Trump Administration days as Treasury Secretary.

“This should be owned by U.S. businesses,” Mnuchin told CNBC this morning. “There’s no way the Chinese would ever let a U.S. company own something like this.”

Analysts say China will likely block such a sale. Other critics point out the improbability of finding a group of investors willing to purchase a business losing billions of dollars per year. If a realistic buyer or group of buyers do emerge, they will face many hurdles. Besides having to build-out operations to be U.S.-based, the potential buyer or buyers would need to come up with a more profitable business model.

That is no easy task in a regulatory milieu with a greater proclivity for imposing rules on social media companies.

Other critics point out that six months is too stringent a timeline for a buyer to rebuild the app and move its operations from China to the U.S., which Mnuchin said would be required under the new bill.

“I think a lot can be done in six months,” he said.

Mnuchin does not want TikTok to be bought by another big tech company, which he said could introduce a new set of antitrust issues in the U.S. He specified that he would include multiple investors and have no one owner but did not disclose who he has in mind for this group of buyers.

“I’m working on it,” Mnuchin said.