US president Donald Trump has indicated a newly-established US Sovereign Wealth Fund may consider acquiring TikTok, the popular short video app with approximately 170 million American users. This move comes after Trump signed an executive order on Monday creating this fund.
A Sovereign Wealth Fund is a state-owned investment fund composed of financial assets such as stocks, bonds, property or other financial instruments.
The proposed acquisition comes after a law requiring TikTok's owner, ByteDance, to sell the platform or face a ban, took effect on 19 January. The ban was signed into law by outgoing president Joe Biden last April, citing national security concerns. However, Trump delayed the enforcement of the law by 75 days, shortly after his inauguration last month.
During the signing of the executive order, Trump said: “We're going to be doing something, perhaps with TikTok. If we make the right deal, we might put that in the Sovereign Wealth Fund, or if we do a partnership with very wealthy people, there are lots of options, but we could put that as an example in the fund and we have a lot of other things that we could put in the fund.”
Treasury secretary Scott Bessent said that through the sovereign fund, the aim is to monetise US assets over the next 12 months for the benefit of American citizens. He emphasised the fund will study best practices from around the world and combine liquid assets with US-based assets to generate wealth.
Countries with a Sovereign Wealth Fund include China, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, according to the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute.
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