The Trump administration wants to supplement taxpayers’ contributions to newborn stock market accounts by soliciting donations from some of the nation’s wealthiest people and corporations, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced Wednesday.
President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans’ massive tax and immigration law that passed this summer included a new program to seed investment accounts with $1,000 each for babies born during Trump’s term.
The “Trump accounts” will invest in index funds, and family members, friends, employers and philanthropies can contribute up to $5,000 into the account each year. Parents will use a new IRS form — Form 4547, echoing Trump’s presidential terms — to file information about the accounts.
Bessent said the administration was launching a “50-state challenge” to draw additional ultra-wealthy individuals to the cause.
“The president is calling on our nation’s business leaders and philanthropic organizations to help us make America great again by securing the financial future of America’s children,” Bessent said.
Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell and his wife Susan announced they’d contribute $6.25 billion to top off the government’s initial investment in children’s accounts. Billionaire investor Ray Dalio said Wednesday that he would contribute $250 per account for babies in Connecticut, his home state, a roughly $75 million donation.
BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, and Bank of New York Mellon have also announced programs to match employees’ contributions to children’s accounts.
Trump has been struggling to calm voters’ jitters on cost-of-living issues.
Questions about prices appear to have irritated Trump, who has recently called the idea of affordability a “hoax” after promising on the campaign trail to lower consumer costs on his first day back in office.
Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy by a 21-point margin, according to a PBS News/NPR/Marist poll released Wednesday. Fifty-seven percent of Americans do not approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, while 36 percent do, the lowest the poll has found over both of his terms.
The administration has taken different approaches to the issue. Vice President JD Vance during a speech in eastern Pennsylvania on Tuesday lamented, “Every single affordability crisis that we talk about in the United States of America today, it’s because we inherited a nightmare of an economy from Joe Biden.”
Bessent on Wednesday, pointing to the GOP tax law known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” promised better times were ahead when major components of the legislation, including the newborn accounts, kick in.
“We have spent 2025 setting the table, and now it’s time for the banquet,” Bessent said.
While some businesses do project green pastures in the new year — Goldman Sachs in its 2026 outlook forecast growth in certain industrials, materials and consumer discretionary markets — other parts of the economy appearing to be waning.
The unemployment rate jumped to 4.6 percent Tuesday after two months of lackluster jobs growth, and inflation rates are stable but remain well above the Federal Reserve’s target.
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