| Bloomberg News reporter Joe Deaux, who covers economic statecraft, wrote this week about a new Trump administration effort to get involved in a mine purchase. That raised the question, “Isn’t this what a sovereign wealth fund would do?” Keep reading to see what some experts said. Plus: Are weight-loss drugs driving the rise of food-scented perfumes? And troubles at aquatic attractions in Mexico and Florida include dead dolphins. If this email was forwarded to you, click here to sign up. In the latest unconventional move in a string of actions it’s been willing to deploy in the corporate sector, the Trump administration is backing efforts for a private US company to bid on some of the world’s largest untapped deposits of tungsten from the Kazakhstan sovereign wealth fund, Bloomberg News reported this week. It doesn’t register in terms of size and significance compared with the government’s almost $9 billion equity investment in Intel Corp. or the Pentagon’s pact to acquire a $400 million preferred equity stake in the nation’s only rare earth producer, MP Materials Corp. But the involvement of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick comes as at least one Chinese state-backed company is vying to acquire the same assets, pitting the world’s two largest economies against each other in a de facto bidding war to buy a mine in a former Soviet republic. Academics, investors and former custodians of sovereign wealth funds have spent the past half-year discussing whether the US has actually been operating a wealth fund of its own in plain sight. The overwhelming response is: Yes, it has been, even if it doesn’t fall under the traditional structures. “Even though it looks like a collection of random deals, it’s a very clear industrial policy, which is ‘Made in the USA,’” says Winston Ma, an adjunct professor at New York University School of Law and the former head of the North America office for China’s sovereign wealth fund. “At this moment this is very much a sovereign fund driven by the executive branch, namely Trump and Co.” The list of projects involved is growing. In addition to the Intel and MP Materials deals, the US agreed to take a stake in Lithium Americas Corp., which owns the largest lithium deposit in the country, and another stake in Canadian minerals explorer Trilogy Metals Inc. That doesn’t even mention the “golden share” President Donald Trump secured when he approved a Japanese steelmaker’s purchase of US Steel Corp., giving the president personal veto power over decisions the newly combined company may want to take on the US assets. In each of these deals, the money came from different agencies through funds they were already authorized to deploy. Which is important from a practical and legal standpoint. Trump in February signed an executive order directing officials to create a sovereign wealth fund for the US, but put the plan on the back burner as it became increasingly clear it would require congressional approval.  Trump signs an executive order during a Feb. 3 ceremony in the Oval Office directing officials to create a sovereign wealth fund. Photographer: Chris Kleponis/CNP/Bloomberg Instead the executive branch is operating with money that’s already been allocated. The Commerce Department, for example, reappropriated Chips Act funding for the Intel deal, and the Pentagon deployed resources through the Defense Production Act for MP Materials. Call it a “federated sovereign wealth fund,” says Salar Ghahramani, a professor at Penn State University and founder of Global Policy Advisors, a sovereign wealth fund advisory firm. “It’s doing the things that a sovereign wealth fund would do, whether it’s direct investments or taking equity stakes or buying currencies,” says Ghahramani, who’s studied sovereign wealth funds for 20 years. “I would call it a strategic sovereign wealth fund, and by strategic I mean designed for a very specific purpose: pursuing the national interests specifically when it comes to rare earths and critical minerals and defense purposes. It’s just amazing to watch. Objectively, I’m fascinated by it.” And none of this even touches on the TikTok deal and the investments promised as part of the Japan and EU trade deals. As Bloomberg News has previously reported, the US is looking to deploy agencies such as the US International Development Finance Corp. and the Export-Import Bank to provide financial support in a broad swath of industries the administration deems critical to national and economic security. Who oversees it all isn’t exactly clear. As Ma and Ghahramani point out, unlike at a traditional wealth fund, the US doesn’t have a team of traders to take on these equity stakes and centralize decision-making. And the biggest controversy in this great new experiment is the issue of corporate governance. The federal government is now a regulator and an investor in the same companies, potentially creating tension between what’s good for the company and what’s good for the country. | 
