Michael Dell, philanthropist and founder of Dell Technologies, pushed back against critics who argue that allowing wealthy investors to donate individual company stocks to Trump Accounts could have a nefarious impact.
Under new rules that took effect last week, charities can put individual stocks into kids’ accounts as a donation. Trump Accounts are tax-advantaged investment vehicles that can be used for education expenses, starting a business, or saving for retirement. They were authorized in last year’s One Big Beautiful Tax bill. Previously, the money was required to be invested in low-cost index funds.
Read 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 stock contribution, pledging more than 2 million shares to benefit lower-income children ages 11 to 17 living in lower-income areas.
“It’s kind of hard for me to believe that’s a bad thing, right?” Dell said Wednesday in an interview with Yahoo Finance. “That these children are going to somehow be negatively influenced because they now have one share of SpaceX, but they didn’t have before, right? The alternative is they didn’t have it, right?”
He continued, “It seems unlikely that that is some kind of devious plot to somehow influence these 2 million children. If anything, they’re going to be interested in space and capitalism and how capital markets work, compounding and investing, and it will spark an interest in them that hopefully helps them as they become adults.”
Critics say the rule change could tie a child’s long-term financial security to a single company rather than the broader economy, and they’ve raised ethical concerns that billionaire donors could use multibillion-dollar stock dumps into kids’ portfolios to manipulate asset prices or secure tax write-offs.
Dell and his wife, Susan, have 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 the contribution, representing $2.6 billion invested. By Friday, the full $6.25 billion is expected to be invested.
“I believe there will be a number of additional philanthropists that join us,” said Dell. “We have now many employers that are joining in the fund here and either matching the government’s contribution or going much larger and contributing to the accounts of the children that work inside their companies or even children in the communities where they operate their businesses.”
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