{"id":641421,"date":"2026-05-13T22:01:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T22:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/641421\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T22:01:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T22:01:10","slug":"trump-wants-wall-street-to-manage-your-retirement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/641421\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Wants Wall Street to Manage Your Retirement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amid a multimillion-dollar lobbying and campaign-finance blitz by major financial asset managers, President Donald Trump has introduced a new plan pushing Americans to invest their retirement dollars in Wall Street. Instead of shoring up the social safety net, financial experts warn that the White House is trying to privatize it\u00a0\u2014 potentially at the expense of the country\u2019s most vulnerable, who are increasingly exposed as the Trump administration takes a sledgehammer<\/a> to other federal benefits.<\/p>\n

And Charles Schwab, a GOP megadonor and founder of the brokerage firm of the same name, is now asking Congress<\/a> to automatically enroll workers in this \u201cgenerational boost to U.S. savings.\u201d<\/p>\n

One silver lining is that the exorbitant fees charged by rapacious private equity firms appear to have disqualified them from the plan.<\/p>\n

An executive order<\/a> issued by the president last week outlines a series of actions to help working-class Americans without access to employer-sponsored retirement plans invest in tax-advantaged, market-based individual retirement accounts (IRAs).<\/p>\n

\u201cThe stock market has done so well, setting\u202fall those records\u00a0\u2014 your 401(k)s are way up,\u201d Trump said<\/a> at his State of the Union address in January.\u202f\u201cYet, half of\u202fall working Americans still do not have access to a retirement plan with matching contributions from an employer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like other Trump-branded White House efforts\u00a0\u2014 like Trump Accounts<\/a> for children and the Big Pharma directory website TrumpRx.gov<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 the administration will also launch TrumpIRA.gov, a website where any worker without an employer-sponsored plan can enroll in an eligible IRA.<\/p>\n

The executive order also details the implementation of a Biden-era law<\/a>, set to take effect at the beginning of next year, that will make a government-sponsored \u201cSaver\u2019s Match\u201d available to twenty-two million<\/a> low-income workers without a 401(k). Single taxpayers making up to $35,500 will be eligible for a 50 percent federal match on contributions to a qualified IRA, up to $1,000 a year.<\/p>\n

Charles Schwab, a GOP megadonor and founder of the brokerage firm of the same name, is now asking Congress to automatically enroll workers in this \u2018generational boost to U.S. savings.\u2019<\/p>\n

To qualify for the Saver\u2019s Match or appear on TrumpIRA.gov, IRAs must maintain \u201clow administrative costs,\u201d with net expenses capped at 0.15 percent and be \u201cdesigned to protect principal on an ongoing basis,\u201d as opposed to high-risk, growth-focused investments.<\/p>\n

These standards effectively disqualify private equity from the new measures. On top of aggressive growth strategies that tend to prioritize<\/a> liquidation and cost-cutting, private equity funds generally charge investors a 2 percent<\/a> management fee plus an additional 20 percent fee on earnings over a certain threshold.<\/p>\n

The decision to exclude high-risk private equity funds from Saver\u2019s Match and TrumpIRA.gov comes as the Trump administration opens the door<\/a> to private equity tapping into people\u2019s 401(k)s, a long-awaited bailout<\/a> for underperforming private funds.<\/p>\n

The executive order \u201cdefinitely rules out private equity. It looks like the Trump administration has Vanguard or something similar in mind,\u201d Eileen Appelbaum, senior economist and codirector of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, told the Lever.<\/p>\n

While Trump\u2019s IRA order may have stopped short of letting private equity prey on more workers\u2019 retirement funds, it will still channel workers\u2019 savings into the private market, enriching Wall Street behemoths. This comes at a time when Social Security faces a funding shortfall<\/a> in the next decade, in part because wealth inequality has left very little income actually eligible<\/a> for the Social Security tax.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf [Trump\u2019s executive order] is embodied in legislation that passes, I am afraid it will be used to try to undermine Social Security,\u201d Appelbaum said. \u201cRepublicans should use the government match funds to shore up Social Security and expand benefits for people below an income threshold.\u201d<\/p>\n

Consumer advocates and academics have long warned that privatizing the senior safety net could come at the expense of retirees, undermining<\/a> consistent access to guaranteed benefits and putting their futures at the whim of the market<\/a>. While opponents of Social Security argue that retirees would see higher returns on the market, research shows that added risk and higher administrative costs<\/a> make these profits \u201cillusory<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moreover, working-class Americans\u00a0\u2014 particularly women and racial minorities<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 tend to be disadvantaged by investment-based retirement accounts because lower lifetime earnings equate to lower savings, as opposed to set benefits guaranteed by the government.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration\u2019s 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act provided seniors with a temporary deduction for taxes owed on Social Security, offering some relief<\/a> to middle- and high-income households. But overall, the sweeping law will deplete tax revenues, accelerating<\/a> Social Security\u2019s insolvency.<\/p>\n

And while Social Security beneficiaries next year are expected to receive another multipercentage-point increase<\/a> in payments in what some are calling a \u201cTrump bump,\u201d these cost-of-living adjustments cover inflation and don\u2019t represent a meaningful increase in benefits.<\/p>\n

Currently, the Trump administration is poised to cut Social Security benefits for as many as 400,000 individuals with disabilities who live with relatives.<\/p>\n

Amid a staff exodus<\/a> last year, the Social Security Administration proposed\u00a0\u2014 and then abandoned<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 a plan that could have disqualified hundreds of thousands of older Americans from disability benefits by limiting age as a factor for consideration.<\/p>\n

Currently, the Trump administration is poised to cut Social Security benefits for as many as 400,000 individuals<\/a> with disabilities, including those with Down syndrome and dementia, who live with relatives.<\/p>\n

Separately, the Treasury Department has openly pitched new long-term market-based savings accounts for children\u00a0\u2014 dubbed Trump Accounts\u00a0\u2014 as \u201ca backdoor<\/a> for privatizing Social Security.\u201d And this week, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) offered<\/a> a \u201cdirty little secret\u201d at a recent conference: \u201cTrump Accounts are Social Security personal accounts.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the asset management industry, government-backed IRAs are lucrative: they\u2019re compounding, long-term investment vehicles with low turnover and a lifetime potential for fees<\/a>. IRAs held roughly 23 percent<\/a> of all US mutual fund assets in 2021, representing $6 trillion in investments.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no wonder that Charles Schwab, founder of the brokerage of the same name, penned a<\/a> Financial Times<\/a> opinion piece<\/a> this week encouraging Congress to pass legislation automatically enrolling eligible workers in approved IRAs, such as those managed by his firm. Schwab applauded \u201cTrump\u2019s generational boost to U.S. savings\u201d\u00a0\u2014 failing to mention that the $1,000 Saver\u2019s Match program was passed under President Joe Biden.<\/p>\n

Schwab the individual, and Schwab the firm, have donated hundreds of thousands<\/a> of dollars to Republican PACs so far this year. That includes a combined $620,200 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee as well as more than $10,000 to Sen. Majority Leader John Thune\u2019s (R-SD) Heartland Values PAC.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the Investment Company Institute, the leading trade group representing the asset management industry, has spent just under $1.3 million<\/a> lobbying the federal government so far in 2026, including on \u201cproposals to promote retirement savings through employer-sponsored plans and IRAs.\u201d The firm\u2019s PAC has also spent more than $1 million<\/a> so far trying to influence the 2025\u20132026 election season, after spending $1.8 million<\/a> last cycle, most of which went to Republicans.<\/p>\n

The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, another asset management trade group, has spent $1.9 million<\/a> lobbying the federal government in 2026, including on \u201cissues relating to the preservation of [the] private sector retirement system.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the top three retail brokerages in the country\u00a0\u2014 Fidelity, Charles Schwab, and Vanguard\u00a0\u2014 helped wealthy megadonors anonymously funnel $171 million<\/a> to sixty-eight right-wing nonprofits during the 2024 cycle, courtesy of shadowy charity vehicles<\/a> called donor-advised funds. That includes $18 million<\/a> directly to the Heritage Foundation, the author of Project 2025<\/a>, the archconservative blueprint for Trump\u2019s authoritarian second-term takeover.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amid a multimillion-dollar lobbying and campaign-finance blitz by major financial asset managers, President Donald Trump has introduced a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":641422,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[28,147,530],"class_list":["post-641421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}