US President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC on September 5, 2025.
Mandel Ngan | Afp | Getty Images
President Donald Trump will sign an executive order on Thursday to create a new type of retirement account for workers who don’t currently have access to a 401(k) or another workplace plan, White House officials confirmed to CNBC.
Trump’s order would launch a new website, TrumpIRA.gov, where workers could research, compare and enroll in private-sector retirement plans through which they could collect the match.
The president initially floated the idea of creating the accounts, which would come with a federal matching contribution of up to $1,000, during his State of the Union address in February.
Roughly 56 million Americans lack access to an employer-sponsored retirement plan at work, according to 2025 research from the Pew Charitable Trusts, an independent public policy nonprofit.
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Trump’s order, first reported by Semafor, will be integrated with the Saver’s Match, a provision from 2022 legislation known as Secure 2.0. The Saver’s Match goes into effect in tax year 2027.
Under those rules, single taxpayers with an adjusted gross income of $20,000 (or joint filers making up to $40,000), qualify for a government match worth 50% of up to a $2,000 contribution to a qualified retirement account, for a maximum match of $1,000 a year. Single filers with annual incomes between $20,000 and $35,000 qualify for reduced contributions.
In 2025, the Morningstar model of retirement outcomes projected that Americans eligible for the match would receive a 12% boost to their wealth in retirement.
About 26 million full- and part-time workers who qualify for a full or partial version of the Saver’s Match don’t have access to a plan where they can collect the benefit, according to the Economic Innovation Group, a bipartisan public policy organization.
“Establishing a universal retirement system to companion with Social Security was always needed, and its time has come,” said Teresa Ghilarducci, a professor at The New School who co-authored 2021 research with National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett on providing low-income workers with retirement savings similar to the Thrift Savings Plan.
Legislation ‘critical as part of the conversation’
The executive order will instruct the White House to work with Congress to propose legislation that will make both the coverage and the savings credit larger, Ghilarducci said.
It’ll “make this effort stickier, because it’ll be a congressional action, not just from a president,” she said.
If the forthcoming executive order calls for Congress to act on the issue, that would be “really important and well received,” said Shai Akabas, vice president of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
The Saver’s Match is a step in the right direction to getting more low- to moderate-income people to save who do not have access to employer-sponsored plans, Akabas said. The initiative could give people more information and easier channels to set up an account, he said.
“We know that the significant majority of people are unlikely to take these proactive steps on their own,” Akabas said. “That’s why the call for legislative action is also really critical as part of the conversation here.”
Congress has already put forward proposals to address this issue. The Retirement Savings for Americans Act, a bicameral bill, calls for the creation of portable, tax-advantaged retirement savings accounts. The Automatic IRA Act, a bill proposed in the House, would require employers with more than 10 employees to enroll employees in automatic IRAs or other automatic retirement contribution plans.
Meanwhile, 17 states have passed legislation to establish automatic enrollment individual retirement accounts, or auto-IRAs, that provide access to state-facilitated retirement plans for workers whose employers do not provide their own plans.
As the federal push to encourage retirement savings moves forward, policymakers will have to think about the costs to both the federal government and employers, as well as the details for how the plans may be set up, Akabas said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.