Trump’s Cuts Put His Brand New “Trump Accounts” at Risk
Donald Trump’s eponymously named childhood investment accounts might not survive his own administration’s cost-cutting measures.
The Trump Accounts program was officially launched on Independence Day, offering $1,000 deposits in Treasury-held funds for Americans born between 2025 and 2028. The administration has since been on a marketing kick trying to figure out how to get Americans to utilize the new initiative, including an effort by the Social Security Administration to develop a process that would automatically enroll newborns in Trump Accounts when they receive their social security numbers, Newsweek reported Thursday.
A Trump official committed the administration to the task earlier this week, telling Newsweek that the “goal” was to have “every American child own a Trump Account.”
But researchers that specialize in the implementation of government program enrollment argue that the expensive operation—and its novel implementation—could be at risk due to another Trump campaign priority: government-wide short-staffing caused by the now-defunct Department of Government Efficiency.
“The administration would need to invest heavily in outreach and support to help people understand what the accounts are, how they enroll in them, and then how they use them,” Pamela Herd, a professor of social policy at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, told Newsweek. “But given DOGE cuts to federal agencies, from the IRS to U.S. Digital Services, I don’t believe they have that capacity.”
White House spokesperson Kush Desai described Herd’s analysis as an “idiotic suggestion” and said there is “no workforce-related bottleneck depressing Trump Account signups.”
“In fact, parents don’t need to interact with a single government worker to sign their kids up for Trump Accounts,” Desai told Newsweek. “They can seamlessly do so by heading to TrumpAccounts.gov and filling out a quick and simple online form.”
Trump Accounts were tacked on as a stipulation for the president’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” tax plan last year, which offered whopping tax cuts for corporations and the ultrawealthy while gutting social programs such as Medicaid. Weeks after the bill was signed into law, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent referred to the Trump Accounts as a “backdoor for privatizing Social Security.”
“Social Security is a defined benefit plan paid out to the extent that if, all of a sudden, these accounts grow and you have in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for your retirement, then that’s a game changer, too,” Bessent said in July 2025.
