Could ‘Trump Accounts’ Actually Close the Wealth Gap?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Zolan Kano-Youngs** (0:30)
From The New York Times, I'm Zolan Kano-Youngs filling in as host. And this is The Daily.

**Donald Trump** (0:36)
I want to stand next to these. Soon to be very rich people.

**Zolan Kano-Youngs** (0:42)
Earlier this month, in the Oval Office surrounded by kids, President Trump rang a ceremonial bell to open the stock market.

**Donald Trump** (0:51)
So today with the ringing of the opening bell for the stock market, those accounts will now begin to grow right along with our booming economy.

**Zolan Kano-Youngs** (0:59)
He announced the start of so-called Trump accounts, a new investment device that could eventually address the nation's wealth gap.

**Donald Trump** (1:07)
We're giving this money to children so they can have a good life. Very early on, they can have a good life.

**Zolan Kano-Youngs** (1:15)
Today, my colleague Claire Cain Miller, on how these accounts actually work, why they have bipartisan support, and why, even weeks after their launch, so many Americans have yet to sign up for free money. It's Friday, July 24th.
Hello, Claire.

**Donald Trump** (1:40)
Hi.

**Zolan Kano-Youngs** (1:40)
I'm so glad that you could join us today, because when we talk about Trump's signature piece of legislation of this second term, what he calls the big, beautiful bill, we typically talk about tax cuts, we talk about ICE funding, hiring border patrol agents, but tucked into this enormous piece of legislation is an initiative that I know you have been focusing on, and that's Trump accounts.
Claire, as someone who covers families and the public policy that affects them, can you tell me where this idea came from, this idea of Trump branded investment accounts for children? Where do we start here?

**Claire Cain Miller** (2:18)
Sure. So the general idea is that babies and children can start investing in the stock market, and babies born during Trump's second term get $1,000 from the federal government to do so.
The idea is actually decades old. It's trying to address the fact that many Americans aren't in the stock market at all, and so they're missing out on that wealth building, and it contributes to a wealth gap between kids from poor and rich families, kids from black and Latino families and white families, and so the general idea is try to shrink that to give everyone a chance to invest starting when they're really young so that they have more time for that investment to compound and grow.

**Zolan Kano-Youngs** (3:05)
This is essentially free money. People don't need to pay for this. This is just money that's out there that they can take advantage of.

**Claire Cain Miller** (3:10)
That's right. All they need to do is open a Trump account.

**Zolan Kano-Youngs** (3:13)
You mentioned that there was also a history behind this kind of idea even before Trump announced it as well. Can you take me through a little bit of that history?

**Claire Cain Miller** (3:22)
Sure. So, this idea started several decades ago, and there are a few states that have experimented with it. Two examples are Oklahoma, where some kids, as part of an experiment, have received money to invest in the stock market.
And Maine, where a philanthropist has pledged to give every baby born a certain amount of money to invest in the stock market. Some cities have also done this, and they're mostly going into college savings accounts, like 529s. And the idea, interestingly to me, has bipartisan support. Both Democrats and Republicans have supported the general idea. They might disagree on some of the specifics of how the policy works. But the idea of allowing children to start investing in the stock market when they're young appeals to both parties. And it's one that people have been trying to get in to the mainstream for decades now.

**Zolan Kano-Youngs** (4:18)
That's interesting.

**Claire Cain Miller** (4:19)
More recently, there were two bills, one from the right and one from the left, trying to start these accounts. One was from Cory Booker, a Democrat who proposed the idea of baby bonds, where all babies would get a certain amount and then babies born in low-income families would get even more to try to close that wealth gap.
And then another idea came from someone on the opposite side of the aisle, Ted Cruz, who proposed an idea that looks very much like the version of Trump accounts that we now have in this bill.