Trump Signs Order to Create US Sovereign Wealth Fund, Eyeing TikTok Purchase

The US president signed an executive order in the Oval Office to have Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce secretary nominee Howard Lutnick create and lead such a fund, The Hill reported.

“It’s a very exciting event. We’re going to have a sovereign wealth fund, which we’ve never had,” he said. “We have a lot of things that create wealth and you’re seeing that over the last two weeks, I think we’ve created more wealth.”

Bessent called the fund “very exciting” and said a fund will be created within the next 12 months, noting it will aim to monetize the asset side of the US balance sheet and “put the assets to work.”

“TikTok — we’re going to be doing something, perhaps, with TikTok, and perhaps not, if we make the right deal we’ll do it, otherwise we won’t, but I have the right to do that,” Trump said. “And we might put that in the sovereign wealth fund, whatever will make. Or if we do a partnership with very wealthy people. A lot of options, but we could put that as an example of the fund.”

The president also said he wants to eventually “catch” the Saudi Arabia wealth fund and argued that the US can have one of the biggest funds in a small period of time.

Trump has pushed to reach a deal to keep TikTok active in the US and attributes his popularity on the app to his support from young people in the 2024 race.

Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office halting for 75 days the enforcement of the law that required TikTok’s parent company to divest itself of the app.

The ban on TikTok was set to go into effect the day before Trump was sworn in, after the app’s China-based parent company, ByteDance, failed to divest as required by a law passed by Congress and signed by former US President Biden.