Did Trump Create 200,000 Millionaires in Pennsylvania?

Did President Trump create 200,000 millionaires in Pennsylvania? It sounds like political hyperbole, but compound interest says it is at least possible.

Trump Accounts allow families, employers and others to contribute money while a child is growing up. Children born from 2025 through 2028 are also eligible for a one-time $1,000 federal contribution.

Stay with me as we work through the math.

Assume that $1,000 is invested at birth. Then assume parents, grandparents, or employers contribute $610 per year for the next 18 years, roughly $51 per month.

Finally, assume the account earns an average annual return of 8%.

By age 18, the family personally contributed only about $10,980. Add the federal $1,000 and the total amount ever deposited is just under $12,000.

As the money has been compounding along the way, the account at age 18 would be worth approximately $26,900.

Without additional contributions, leave the $26,900 invested from age 18 until age 65 and continue earning 8% annually.

By 30, it becomes $67,700; by 40, $146,000; by 50, $315,000; by 60, $680,000.

At 65, it crosses $1 million.

Children who do not qualify for the federal $1,000 need only slightly more. At the same 8% return, about $717 per year, or roughly $60 per month, contributed from birth through age 17 would also compound to approximately $1 million by 65.

Together, these accounts could represent approximately $40 billion in today's purchasing power.

That spending ripples through the economy. Retirees buy groceries, hire contractors, eat at restaurants, pay for health care, travel and help their grandchildren. Those businesses pay employees and suppliers, who spend some of that money again.

Of course, these children won't retire simultaneously, and no one can guarantee 8% returns for 65 years. But, the exercise demonstrates the potential scale.

Furthermore, these accounts exist on top of Social Security.

Social Security provides income to retirees through a transfer system financed primarily by current workers. A Trump Account is an individually owned financial asset. Its owner possesses shares of businesses that can appreciate over decades and eventually provide an independent source of retirement income.

A generation enters retirement with Social Security as a piece of the pie rather than its only meaningful source of income, with additional resources for housing, health care, spending and inheritance.

Perhaps most importantly, millions of Americans grow up owning a piece of the American economy.

The wealthy have understood this math for generations. Their children inherit stocks, brokerage accounts and appreciating assets.

The difference with Trump Accounts is that compound interest is no longer reserved for children fortunate enough to be born into families already owning capital. For the first time, millions of children could begin life not merely as future workers, but as owners.

Ironically, one of Trump's most potentially consequential anti-poverty programs may work not by redistributing wealth, but by creating capitalists.

That idea may be especially consequential at a moment when young Americans are losing faith in capitalism.

In 2010, 68% of Americans under 30 viewed capitalism positively. By 2018, that had fallen to just 45%, while 51% viewed socialism positively.

Perhaps the best antidote to socialism isn't another lecture about capitalism. It's giving people a stake in capitalism.

It's easier to believe in capitalism when capitalism is working for you.

If even a meaningful portion of Pennsylvania's estimated 200,000 Trump Account holders follows the formula, President Trump may have done something far more consequential than create another tax-advantaged savings account.

He may have created 200,000 Pennsylvania millionaires.

And, along the way, 200,000 new capitalists.

Athan Koutsiouroumbas is a managing director at Long Nyquist and Associates and a former congressional chief of staff. Follow him on X at @Athan_K.