The News
President Donald Trump on Monday ordered the creation of a US sovereign wealth fund, suggesting it could buy the embattled Chinese-owned video app TikTok.
A sovereign wealth fund would “monetize the asset side of the U.S. balance sheet for the American people,” Trump said, without elaborating, Axios reported.
Trump’s treasury secretary suggested that the project would be up and running within the year.
Such an investment vehicle would require congressional approval, and it’s unclear how it would be funded.
China, Iran, Norway and Saudi Arabia all have large sovereign wealth funds, which are typically used to help a country diversify its economy away from one key industry.
But sovereign wealth funds only make sense “for countries with state-owned assets, budget surpluses, and weak private sectors — none of which apply to the US,” Semafor Business Editor Liz Hoffman wrote last year after Trump first floated the idea. “America’s resources are, for better or worse, in private hands.”
