The Trump White House updated its projections of how much children could earn from the newly launched Trump Accounts after criticism that its earlier calculations were nonsensical.
Following the accounts’ launch on Wednesday, the Trump Accounts website showed that investing $0 per year will result in a potential Trump Account recipient receiving $200,000 by age 55.
Yet, according to the Trump administration’s calculations, investing $250 per year over the same period would have left the recipient with just $192,000, less than if they had invested the money, the Daily Beast originally reported.
After the Daily Beast’s reporting identified the discrepancies, the Trump Accounts website quietly updated its predictions for how much a newborn could earn with a Trump Account over a 55-year time frame.
The website now states that investing no money in the account will yield $243,000 for a Trump Account holder over a 55-year period.
It goes on to state that investing $250 per year now yields $878,000, and that investing the maximum $5,000 per year will yield $13 million over 55 years—a staggering increase from the original $2.7 million prediction.
The website says the numbers are “derived from historical S&P 500 averages.”
The White House did not return the Daily Beast’s requests for comment on the various discrepancies.
A fact sheet from the Council of Economic Advisors outlines various return-on-investment scenarios for Trump Accounts. These figures largely do not appear to be what is currently on the Trump Accounts website.
Parents of children born between 2025 and 2028—the year that Trump is supposed to leave office—are eligible to sign up their children for the accounts. The accounts come with an initial deposit of $1,000 funded by the federal government through Trump’s signature tax and spending legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill.
Parents can sign their children up for the accounts using the new, aptly named IRS Form 4547. The accounts convert to traditional Roth IRAs when the child turns 18.
Officials in the Trump administration also appear unable to keep the numbers straight.
At a forum during the Trump Accounts’ launch, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that investing a maximum of $5,000 per year in the accounts could yield $1.1 million by age 28.
But the website stated on Wednesday that by age 27, if the maximum is invested, the account would have $377,800. By Thursday, that estimate suddenly increased to $742,000.
The president himself claimed that by the time a Trump Account holder turns 18, “With every modest contribution, Trump Accounts should reach at least $50,000 in value.”
He also claimed with “ slightly greater contributions” that the average Trump Account “will grow to $100,000, $200,000, and can even increase to more than $300,000 per child
The Trump Accounts’ updated website, however, states that with the $250 per year contribution, an account would reach $19,000 by age 18.
Math has never been the Trump White House’s strong suit. The president frequently makes up numbers to oversell his economic agenda.
Trump often claims that gas prices nationwide are under $2, a false claim that the president was called out for to his face just this week.
On drug prices, Trump has claimed that his administration could bring down prices “1,000 percent, 600 percent, 500 percent, 1,500 percent,” as he claimed to use a “certain talent” to reach “numbers not even thought to be achievable.”
