Billionaire TikTok investor Jeff Yass is among the names on a shortlist for former President Donald Trump’s Treasury secretary, should he win a second term.
Insiders told Bloomberg that the 68-year-old was a strong candidate, along with former US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Key Square Group LP founder Scott Bessent and hedge fund titan John Paulson.
Yass is co-founder of Susquehanna International Group LLP, a technology and trading firm based in Philadelphia.
The largest asset in his $40.8 billion portfolio is a stake in TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, worth as much as $15 billion.
The Republican megadonor’s name has recently surfaced in the news amid speculation that TikTok may be banned from app stores and web servers in the United States.
Former President Donald Trump is reportedly considering Republican megadonor Jeff Yass for Treasury secretary should he win a second term
Yass is co-founder of Susquehanna International Group LLP, a technology and trading firm
He owns a $15 billion stake in TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance
The U.S. House of Representatives voted Wednesday in favor of legislation that could ban the platform in the United States.
Trump led the charge to ban the app in 2020, but recently changed his position and voiced his opposition to the bipartisan bill.
“Get rid of TikTok and Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their revenue,” the former president wrote on social media, with a snarky reference to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
“I don’t want Facebook, which cheated in the last election, to do better. They are a real enemy of the people!’
The statement came after Trump met Yass at a donor event hosted by Club for Growth, a conservative nonprofit that counts the billionaire as one of its biggest donors.
Trump has since denied they ever discussed the video-sharing platform. “No, I didn’t do that,” the 77-year-old told CNBC Monday morning. “He never mentioned TikTok.”
However, former campaign chairman and White House adviser Steve Bannon has suggested that Yass was behind Trump’s change of heart.
“Simple: Yass Coin,” Bannon wrote on social media, sharing an Axios article titled “Inside Trump’s TikTok flip-flop.”
Yass and Trump met last week at a donor event for the conservative nonprofit Club for Growth. Shortly afterwards, Trump changed his tune on TikTok, which he previously tried to ban in the US
So far, Yass has given $46.4 million to Republican candidates and committees in the 2024 election cycle
Trump has since denied that Yass “mentioned TikTok” during their meeting at the donor event in Palm Beach, Florida
Yass and his wife Janine contribute millions annually to education providers through the Yass Prize
The billionaire contributed $47 million to Republican candidates and committees during the 2022 midterm elections, making him the nation’s third-largest conservative political donor at the time.
This year he surpassed that recordwhich has disbursed $46.4 million to date and claims the top spot as the largest donor in the 2024 election cycle.
Yass and his wife Janine are also co-founders of the Yass Prize, a non-profit organization that contributes millions annually to education providers.
Campaign spokesman Steven Cheung claims there have been “no discussions about who will serve.” in a second Trump administration.”
In August 2020, Trump issued an executive order demanding that ByteDance sell its US assets and destroy all data within 90 days.
This followed an earlier series of orders that banned the tech giant from conducting transactions in the United States by September that year.
‘There is credible evidence that leads me to believe that ByteDance Ltd. … could take action that threatens to harm the national security of the United States,” Trump wrote in the order.