Michael Dell, a philanthropist and founder of Dell Technologies, has pushed back against critics who say allowing wealthy investors to donate shares of individual companies to Trump accounts could have a harmful impact.
Under new rules that took effect last week, charities can deposit individual shares into children’s accounts as donations. Trump accounts are tax-advantaged investment vehicles that can be used to finance education expenses, start a business, or save for retirement. They were authorized in last year’s One Big Beautiful Tax bill. Previously, money had to be invested in low-cost index funds.
Learn more: Trump accounts expand to stock donations. What are the benefits and risks?
So far, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell is the only donor to announce a major equity contribution, pledging more than 2 million shares to benefit low-income children ages 11 to 17 living in low-income areas.
“It’s a little hard for me to believe that’s a bad thing, isn’t it?” Dell said Wednesday in an interview with Yahoo Finance. “These kids are going to be negatively influenced in some way because they now own a piece of SpaceX when they didn’t have it before, right? The alternative is they didn’t have it, right?”
He continued: “It seems unlikely that this is some sort of devious plot to somehow influence these 2 million kids. Rather, they’re going to become interested in space and capitalism and how capital markets work and capitalization and investing, and that will spark an interest in them that will hopefully help them become adults.”
Critics say the rule change could tie a child’s long-term financial security to a single company rather than the economy as a whole, and they have raised ethical concerns that billionaire donors could use multibillion-dollar stock sales in children’s portfolios to manipulate asset prices or obtain tax deductions.
Dell and his wife Susan pledged to donate $6.25 billion to invest $250 in the Trump accounts of 25 million children across America. More than 10 million children have now received this contribution, representing $2.6 billion invested. By Friday, the entire $6.25 billion is expected to be invested.
“I think a number of additional philanthropists will join us,” Dell said. “We now have many employers joining the fund here and either matching the government’s contribution or going up a lot and contributing to the accounts of the children who work within their businesses or even the children in the communities where they operate their businesses.”
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