{"id":165206,"date":"2025-12-03T01:10:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T01:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/165206\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T01:10:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T01:10:11","slug":"donald-trump-says-us-looking-at-adopting-australian-system-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/165206\/","title":{"rendered":"Donald Trump says US looking at adopting Australian system"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This masthead has asked the White House for further clarification.<\/p>\n<p>The US already has a pension fund system called the 401k, into which employees can voluntarily make payments or opt into automatic payments by their employer.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent with Kevin Rudd at a superannuation talk at the Australian embassy in Washington in February.\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/41331826549b90603913eb8efddeb015b176ff0a.jpeg\" height=\"390\" width=\"584\" \/><\/p>\n<p>US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent with Kevin Rudd at a superannuation talk at the Australian embassy in Washington in February.Credit: Michael Koziol<\/p>\n<p>The Australian government and ambassador Kevin Rudd have relentlessly promoted Australia\u2019s superannuation system to American industry, investors and the Trump administration as a source of potential capital.<\/p>\n<p>US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent attended <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theage.com.au\/link\/follow-20170101-p5lf5k\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">a special superannuation summit in February<\/a> at the Australian embassy in Washington, where he said he was impressed by the reliable growth of Australia\u2019s pension funds.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was struck by \u2026 the confidence that you have in the growth. It\u2019s not what one might expect for Australia,\u201d he said. One would have expected growth to be more dependent on the price of iron ore, he said.<\/p>\n<p>Australia\u2019s superannuation sector manages the fourth-biggest pool of pension funds in the world, and the US is the number one international destination for that capital.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Treasurer Jim Chalmers, Bessent, director of Trump\u2019s National Economic Council Kevin Hassett, and US Ambassador Kevin Rudd in Washington.\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/223362184180ab307fc9d227790561cb7ae1a986.jpeg\" height=\"390\" width=\"584\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Treasurer Jim Chalmers, Bessent, director of Trump\u2019s National Economic Council Kevin Hassett, and US Ambassador Kevin Rudd in Washington.Credit: Michael Butcher Butcher Photography 2024<\/p>\n<p>Treasurer Jim Chalmers told the February summit that the super pool was \u201clarger than the capital controlled by the sovereign wealth funds of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia \u2013 combined\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The amount invested in the US is about $US400 billion and projected to reach $US1 trillion over the next decade.<\/p>\n<p>Under the so-called Trump accounts program \u2013 a measure in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theage.com.au\/link\/follow-20170101-p5mc3b\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the One Big Beautiful Bill<\/a> \u2013 the US government will deposit $US1000 into a \u201ctrust fund\u201d for each American child born from January 1, 2025 to the end of 2028.<\/p>\n<p>The funds will be invested in a broad stockmarket index, and families and others can add up to $US5000 a year to each account. The money can\u2019t be withdrawn until the child turns 18. Contributions can be made from July 4, 2026, the White House says.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Bessent said the accounts would usher in a \u201cnew age of capitalism\u201d and market literacy.\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/5008c20299d2ca23e259daa38f5fb5eaabfc0712.jpeg\" height=\"390\" width=\"584\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Bessent said the accounts would usher in a \u201cnew age of capitalism\u201d and market literacy.Credit: Bloomberg<\/p>\n<p>US Treasury Scott Bessent said the accounts would start \u201ca new age of capitalism and market interest for the whole country\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are going to make sure that all American families have a stake in the success of the United States of America,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople who have a stake in the system and become more and more invested in the system do not want to bring down the system, they want to make it better.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Loading<\/p>\n<p>The Dell money would use similar infrastructure to the Trump accounts but would go to children born between 2016 and 2024, and is reserved for children from zip codes with a median household income below $US150,000.<\/p>\n<p>Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what\u2019s making headlines around the world. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theage.com.au\/link\/follow-20170101-p56l7u\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This masthead has asked the White House for further clarification. The US already has a pension fund system&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165207,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[138,246,111,139,69,244,245],"class_list":{"0":"post-165206","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-finance","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz","13":"tag-personal-finance","14":"tag-personalfinance"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}