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 — potentially at the expense of the country’s most vulnerable, who are increasingly exposed as the Trump administration takes a sledgehammer to other federal benefits.And 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 “generational boost to U.S. savings.”One silver lining is that the exorbitant fees charged by rapacious private equity firms appear to have disqualified them from the plan.An executive order 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).“The stock market has done so well, setting all those records — your 401(k)s are way up,” Trump said at his State of the Union address in January. “Yet, half of all working Americans still do not have access to a retirement plan with matching contributions from an employer.”Like other Trump-branded White House efforts — like Trump Accounts for children and the Big Pharma directory website TrumpRx.gov — the administration will also launch TrumpIRA.gov, a website where any worker without an employer-sponsored plan can enroll in an eligible IRA.The executive order also details the implementation of a Biden-era law, set to take effect at the beginning of next year, that will make a government-sponsored “Saver’s Match” available to twenty-two million low-income workers without a 401(k). Single taxpayers making up to $35,500 will be eligible for a 50 percent federal match on…
