Former President Donald Trump in a speech to business leaders on Thursday called for the creation of a U.S. sovereign wealth fund, a government-owned investment fund, to finance “great national endeavors.”
While offering few details, Trump said the fund would would yield a “gigantic profit” that could help “pay down the national debt” — an unmet goal from his 2016 campaign.
Sovereign wealth funds are prevalent throughout the industrialized and developing world, with the largest ones residing in oil-rich states like Norway, Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf nations as well as China, Singapore and Hong Kong.
“Why don’t we have a wealth fund? Other countries have wealth funds. We have nothing,” Trump said during his speech to The Economic Club of New York, adding that the U.S. fund would be financed by tariffs “and other intelligent things.”
According to the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute, roughly 100 funds currently manage nearly $13 trillion in assets. That includes a handful of U.S. states including Alaska, Texas, New Mexico and others which have set up their own types of government-run funds initially financed by oil, gas and mineral resources. Trump now wants to do the same at the federal level. […]
— Read More: rollcall.com
