There are more than 100 such funds worldwide, managing almost $13 trillion in assets, but Trump has some competition on his hands.
The world's biggest? Norway. Created in 1990 to manage the massive wealth created by the discovery of oil.
It's the backbone of the country's welfare state, providing Norwegians with generous unemployment benefits, a year of shared parental leave, healthcare, and virtually free university.
So, as the U.S. embarks on the greatest sovereign wealth fund of them all, is it worth reflecting on our own fund and the missed opportunities it has created to make Australia great again?
Economic expert Steven Hamilton told The Project that Australia lost a big opportunity back in 2010 “when we got rid of the mining tax”, which he says is “about $80 billion of extra mining revenue”,
He explains that Australia “lost a big opportunity to capture some of those gains from the boom time.”
The Government plans to direct $230 billion from the future fund into housing, energy transition, and infrastructure, but Hamilton thinks “the future fund should be focusing on making money because it's taxpayers' money.”
“If the Government wants to do all these other things, then I think they should budget for them, pay for them, and do them and go to the ballot box and see if the public likes it.”
Hamilton also isn’t sure where the U.S. is getting the funds for their Sovereign Wealth Fund from, explaining that “the US Government has $36 trillion of debt and they are adding $2 trillion a year to that debt pile.”
