President Trump signed an executive order Monday to create a sovereign US wealth fund — saying that TikTok may become one of its first acquisitions.
The world’s largest and wealthiest sovereign funds are owned by China and resource-rich countries like Norway and Middle Eastern emirates.
It was not immediately specified how the US endowment — whose creation was first reported last month by The Post’s Charles Gasparino — would be capitalized, but Trump previously floated using tariff proceeds.
It’s unclear if adding a stake in TikTok would require up-front investment, or if Beijing would offload it without charge to avoid looming 10% levies that Trump announced Friday.
“It’s a very exciting event. We’re going to have a sovereign wealth fund, which we’ve never had,” Trump said in the Oval Office — as News Corp founder Rupert Murdoch and Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison sat nearby.
“Other countries have sovereign wealth funds, and they’re much smaller countries, and they’re not the United States,” Trump said.
“As an example, TikTok, we’re going to be doing something perhaps … and we might put that in the sovereign wealth fund, whatever we make, or if we do a partnership with very wealthy people — a lot of options, but we could put that as an example in the fund.
“We have a lot of other things that we can put in the fund.”
Chinese divestment from TikTok, which has about 170 million US users, is a potential path to avoid a 10% tariff that Trump announced Friday — with the president presenting the levy as a way to stop fentanyl exports that killed at least 281,000 Americans over the past four years.
Trump predicted that “in a short period of time, we’ll have one of the biggest funds … The Saudi Arabia fund is on the large side, but eventually we’ll catch it. But we’re going to create a lot of wealth for the fund.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who are leading the effort, gave brief remarks on the plan.
“We’re going to stand this thing up in the next 12 months. We are going to monetize the asset side of the US balance sheet for the American people. We are going to put the assets to work,” Bessent said.
“And I think it’s going to be very exciting. We’ve studied best practices that’s done around the world. It will be a combination of liquid assets, assets that we have in this country as we work, work to bring them out for the American people.”
Lutnick added that “the extraordinary size and scale of the US government, and the business it does with companies should create value for American citizens.”
“If we are going to buy 2 billion COVID vaccines,” Lutnick said by way of example, “maybe we should have some warrants and some equity in these companies and have that grow for the health of the American people.”
The world’s largest sovereign wealth fund is Norway’s $1.7 trillion Government Pension Global Fund, which reported a $222.4 billion profit last year off funds reinvested from North Sea petroleum proceeds.
