Trump’s Sovereign Wealth Fund: Fantastic or Fantasy?

Dariusz Wójcik & Liam Keenan

Donald Trump’s second term as US president, which commenced on January 20, 2025, has been anything but muted. In a slight deviation from a focus on sanctions and tariffs, he signed an executive order on February 3 that directed the Treasury and the Commerce Department to establish a US Sovereign Wealth Fund. The president wants a world-class sovereign wealth fund fit for the twenty-first century, and he even suggested that it could play a role in acquiring the contested social media platform TikTok, which is Chinese owned.

In Atlas of Finance: Mapping the Global Story of Money, we combine history and geography to show when and where the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds emerged. By understanding this complex picture we begin to see the cracks in President Trump’s grand ambitions.