A “Trump Account” HSA?
- 6 days ago
- 2 min read
The new Trump Accounts, offering tax-advantaged investment accounts to every American born between January 1, 2026, and December 31, 2028, were officially launched a month ago on the 4th of July. The US Treasury deposited $1,000 in the accounts of 6 million Americans who signed up (out of the 14.3 million eligible); by the end of July, the number enrolled had reached 7 million. On the Monday after the launch, from the Oval Office, Trump rang the opening bell for the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ to draw added attention to the rollout of this provision of his signature “Big Beautiful Bill.” But whether it was the hullabaloo surrounding the nation’s 250th birthday or Trump upstaging himself by playing referee at the World Cup, the administration’s remarkable experiment in wealth creation didn’t succeed in making many headlines.
Comment has been muted and predictable. The left complained that the policy was a Wall Street scam that would deepen income inequality. Worse, it had Trump’s name on it, sufficient grounds to dismiss the accounts as just another exercise in Trumpian egomania. Left-leaning labor historian Richard A. Greenwald claimed that such experiments in “popular capitalism” had always failed in the past. The political right, naturally, beamed and talked about citizen empowerment and the desirability of teaching finance and investing to schoolchildren. As Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent commented last January, the accounts would “render socialist notions moot by making every citizen a shareholder.” Right libertarians shook their heads over government handouts and deficit spending. Left libertarians worried that any public-private partnership was bound to turn into an exercise in rent-seeking.
One can sympathize with the libertarian or otherwise small-government reaction, based as it is on long and sad experience. But in this case, past experience is no guarantee of future performance…