(The Epoch Times)—American taxpayers have signed up over 4 million children to the tax-advantaged Trump Accounts, and more than 1 million of those accounts have elected to receive the $1,000 pilot contribution from the government, the IRS said in a March 31 statement.
“Contributions to Trump Accounts can be made starting July 4, 2026. All eligible children may receive deposits from parents, relatives, friends, employers, state governments, philanthropic organizations, and individuals, subject to an annual limit,” the IRS said.
The Trump Accounts, formally the Invest America accounts, were established under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed into law by President Donald Trump in July last year.
Every child under 18 who is a U.S. citizen and has a valid Social Security Number is eligible to open a Trump Account. In addition, any child born between Jan. 1, 2025, and Dec. 31, 2028, can get an initial seed contribution of $1,000 from the government.
According to a March 9 proposed rule from the IRS published in the Federal Register, contributions to Trump Accounts are, in general, subject to an annual limit of $5,000.
Employers can contribute up to $2,500 annually to the Trump Accounts set up by their employees, which will count toward the $5,000 annual threshold. Contributions from the government and nonprofits made via the Treasury Department are not counted in the $5,000 limit.
The annual contribution limits will be indexed to inflation, with adjustments starting after 2027.
Generally, funds in Trump Accounts cannot be withdrawn prior to the child turning 18. After hitting this age, account holders can withdraw the funds for certain qualified purposes such as paying for tuition, purchasing a home, or starting a business.
Funds from the Trump Accounts can be invested only in certain “eligible investments,” such as a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund that tracks stock indexes composed mainly of American companies for which futures contracts are traded in the market. The accounts must avoid using leverage in investments.
The IRS determined that Trump Accounts for more than 4 million children have been opened based on Form 4547 filings made by taxpayers together with their individual tax returns.
“The IRS has been working closely with the Treasury Department to make the election process as simple and easy as possible by permitting taxpayers to fill out a one-page form when they file their tax return,” IRS Chief Executive Officer Frank J. Bisignano said.
“Families with eligible children born between 2025 and 2028 just need to check the box on a form to stake their claim for the $1,000 contribution. It’s that simple.”
Investments made in Trump Accounts grow tax-deferred, meaning no taxes are charged on the account proceeds until funds are withdrawn, according to investment management company Vanguard.
However, California’s Franchise Tax Board recently announced that it will not treat Trump Accounts as tax-deferred accounts for state tax purposes. As such, families in the state will have to pay taxes on the Trump Accounts’ investment earnings rather than the accounts being taxed during withdrawal.
‘Could Become a Cornerstone’
In a Sept. 3 post, State Street Investment Management said there were some “outstanding issues” regarding the Trump Accounts that needed to be addressed.
For instance, employer contributions must be monitored to ensure compliance, according to the post, and there must be mechanisms to enforce prohibition of withdrawals before children turn 18. The Treasury Department must also remain flexible when it comes to adjusting rules for the accounts to address any new challenges or opportunities.
“The successful implementation of these accounts hinges on the Treasury Department’s ability to address and resolve the outstanding issues outlined,” the post said. “With careful regulation and clear guidance, Trump accounts could become a cornerstone of financial security for future generations.”
A June 12 analysis published by the Tax Law Center at the New York University School of Law raised concerns about the fact that funds in Trump Accounts must be invested in corporate equities, which it said makes the investments “high-risk.”
In a March 6 IRS statement, Bisignano cited the benefits provided by these accounts, terming them a “pro-family initiative that will help millions of Americans harness the strength of [the U.S.] economy to lift up this generation and generations to follow and unlock the American Dream.”
In January, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) highlighted how Trump Accounts are positively transformative for American children.
“[In] my hometown that I still live in today, the average income for an individual is less than $26,000 a year. And so when you look at that, this is the opportunity for those kids,” Smith said.
“It doesn’t matter if you live on a city block or a county road, you’re going to have this investment, and it will be transformational,” the lawmaker said. “Americans’ lives are going to be affected in such a positive way for generations.”
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
