Trump's Family Joins the Sprint to Get a National Bank Charter

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:08)
You're listening to Bloomberg Businessweek with Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec on Bloomberg Radio.

**Tim Stenovec** (0:15)
Well, President Trump's family is on the verge of having its very own bank. The president's relatives and their business associates have won preliminary approval to start one, riding a wave that doesn't come around often. It's now easier than at any time in almost 20 years to get a national bank charter thanks to the Trump administration's deregulation push. I'm reading right from one of the most read stories on the Bloomberg terminal. It is today's big take. Paige Smith is Bloomberg News Finance reporter. She's part of the team behind the story. She joins us here in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers Studio.
The process for getting a national bank charter. Before we get into what the president's family is doing and what World Liberty Financial is doing, which you detail in the piece, just talk to us about how that happens and how it traditionally works.

**Paige Smith** (1:00)
Certainly.
First of all, I think it's important to note that there are a number of different bank charters that anyone or any entity can pursue at any given time. The president's family is pursuing a trust charter and has received conditional approval from one financial regulator to do that. That regulator is the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

**Tim Stenovec** (1:23)
The OCC.

**Paige Smith** (1:24)
The OCC, as we know it, run by Jonathan Gould, who is actually a Trump appointee himself.
So there are a lot of different charters that anyone can pursue. Take New Bank, for example, a really well-known fintech that's Brazil-based. They have received approval to be a national bank, so it's slightly different. And maybe a little bit more vanilla or bread and butter than a trust bank, for example.

**Norah Mulinda** (1:52)
So, I mean, the Trump family now on the verge, though, of having its own bank. What exactly are they trying to build?

**Paige Smith** (1:58)
So the entity is known as World Liberty Financial, and it's owned by members of the Trump family and their business associates.
And they are best known for a stable coin called USD1. And when they received this conditional approval, and also before they received approval, when they were applying, World Liberty Financial essentially said that they want to grow the reach of the stable coin and build out the business, build out that business specifically.

**Tim Stenovec** (2:31)
You make the point in your piece that there have been other presidents who've had connections to the financial industry.
The Roosevelts operated their New York-based financial firm for more than a century, you're right. I learned from your reporting that George HW. Bush's father was a managing partner of the financial services firm Brown Brothers Harriman. But is there any precedent for a sitting president to have children who actually are starting a bank?

**Paige Smith** (3:00)
As far as we know, there's not. This is as far as we've reported, this is the first time that something like this has occurred.
And it is really noteworthy because like I mentioned, the application was reviewed by staff members at the OCC, and leaders of that agency were appointed by this sitting precedent by President Donald Trump.

**Tim Stenovec** (3:24)
For those out there watching or listening right now who might say, wait a second, there is a conflict of interest or there could be the appearance of a conflict of interest. You and the team reached out to the White House, what did they say?

**Paige Smith** (3:36)
The White House essentially said that there is no conflict of interest here. And when we looked at the actual documents approving this entity to become a bank, they acknowledged that members of the public had raised the question or raised the question of the appearance of conflicts of interest and essentially said, senior members of the OCC have reviewed this application and it may move forward.

**Norah Mulinda** (4:02)
So why exactly does World Liberty Financial want to become a bank in the first place?

**Paige Smith** (4:07)
So there are a lot of reasons for becoming a bank, cheaper funding is one of them, but especially at this moment in time, if you think about it, if you're a bank in the US financial system, that comes with a level of legitimacy and it's an inherent stamp of approval from the US government to operate.
That's a big deal when you're a smaller digital asset firm or a fintech or an up-and-coming entity to be able to say, we have been approved by this US financial regulator to operate in the US financial system. That's a big deal.