https://arab.news/zd8pa
RIYADH: US President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order directing the relevant authorities to start developing a government-owned investment fund and predicted that the country could eventually top Saudi Arabia’s wealth fund size.
“Eventually we’ll catch it,” he promised referring to the Public Investment Fund, which manages $925 billion in assets, and is set to increase that to $2 trillion by 2030.
The US president noted many other nations have such funds. Sovereign wealth funds invest in assets, such as stocks, bonds and real estate. They are typically funded by a country’s budgetary surpluses, which the US currently does not have.
Ordering the establishment of an investment fund, Trump said that it could be used to profit off of TikTok if he’s successful at finding it an American buyer.
Trump signed an order on his first day office to grant TikTok until early April to find an approved partner or buyer, but he said he’s looking for the US to take a 50 percent stake in the massive social media platform.
He said on Monday in the Oval Office that TikTok, which is owned by China-based ByteDance, was an example of what he could put in a new US sovereign wealth fund.
“We might put that in the sovereign wealth fund, whatever we make or we do a partnership with very wealthy people, a lot of options,” he said of TikTok. “But we could put that as an example in the fund. We have a lot of other things that we could put in the fund.”