President Orders Creation Of A National Savings Fund; The Nation Is $39 Trillion In Debt

In February 2025, the president signed an executive order directing the Treasury and Commerce departments to draw up a plan, within 90 days, for a United States sovereign wealth fund.

Sovereign wealth funds are typically built by countries with money left over — oil states, trade-surplus economies, nations that take in more than they spend. The United States is not, at the moment, one of those countries. It runs an annual deficit and carries a national debt north of $39 trillion, which is generally regarded as the opposite of the raw material a savings fund is made from.

The order does not specify where the money would come from, delegating that detail to the 90-day plan — which is the executive-order equivalent of writing “figure this out” on a napkin and signing it. Proposals since floated have included funding it with tariff revenue and, at one point, a stake in TikTok. The plan was duly delivered in May 2025. More than a year later, the fund does not exist.

The ambition itself isn’t the strange part; every serious country should invest in its future. The strange part is opening a savings account while $39 trillion in the hole and presenting that as the plan.