Just when you think you've got a handle on everything President Trump has in mind, he comes blazing in with another idea. On Monday, to implement one of those ideas, he signed an executive order directing the creation of an American sovereign wealth fund — and claiming that the social media platform TikTok, of all things, may be acquired/partially owned by the fund.

Now that's an interesting proposition.

President Trump on Monday directed secretaries to begin a process to create an American sovereign wealth fund, suggesting it could partially own the popular app TikTok.

The president signed an executive order in the Oval Office to have Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce secretary nominee Howard Lutnick create and lead such a fund.

“It’s a very exciting event. We’re going to have a sovereign wealth fund, which we’ve never had,” the president said. “We have a lot of things that create wealth and you’re seeing that over the last two weeks, I think we’ve created more wealth.”

Bessent called the fund “very exciting” and said a fund will be created within the next 12 months, noting it will aim to monetize the asset side of the U.S. balance sheet and “put the assets to work.”

The TikTok angle is a bit of a head-scratcher since the platform is Chinese-owned. But the president isn't deterred by that.

“TikTok — we’re going to be doing something, perhaps, with TikTok, and perhaps not, if we make the right deal we’ll do it, otherwise we won’t, but I have the right to do that,” Trump said. “And we might put that in the sovereign wealth fund, whatever will make. Or if we do a partnership with very wealthy people. A lot of options, but we could put that as an example of the fund.”

The president also said he wants to eventually “catch” the Saudi Arabia wealth fund and argued that the U.S. can have one of the biggest funds in a small period of time.

A sovereign wealth fund is, in essence, a savings account for a nation or a state. It's normally invested in financial assets: Stocks, bonds, real estate, and gold. The United States gold deposited at Ft. Knox could be considered, in broad terms, to make up part of a sovereign wealth fund, although it's never been designated as such. States can have similar funds. Alaska, for example, has the Alaska Permanent Fund, from which Alaska residents receive an annual stipend.

Starting a sovereign wealth fund is an interesting notion. It's an idea that has the potential to start kicking America's financial balance sheet back a little bit towards solvency; our national debt could go from a catastrophe to merely a disaster.

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China has maintained at least four sovereign wealth funds since 2007. The estimated value of their funds is $1.2 trillion; only Norway (!) has a larger sovereign wealth fund. Were we to match China, we would have a sovereign wealth fund that makes up 3 percent, more or less, of our national debt. Getting America's financial house in order is going to take a lot more than having a chunk of TikTok. But even the longest journey, as the saying goes, begins with the first step.