Let’s all remember The Huffington Post moved its coverage of Donald Trump to the entertainment page in an effort to diminish and disparage, only to revert back to the news page as his popularity rose. Who’s laughing now?
Historians note the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (commonly known as Nazi) was similarly dismissed as childishly buffoon before unleashing the greatest horror in the history of the world. No, we’re NOT calling Trump a Nazi, a term far too cavalierly thrown about in our meme-driven political “discourse;” we’re simply noting that the lefty Alinsky rule No.5, “ridicule is man’s most potent weapon,” doesn’t always hold.
We certainly can’t claim any kind of smug prescience on the matter; indeed, who would have seriously considered Trump a frontrunner, a man who garnered 7 percent of the vote in a hypothetical run against George W. and Al Jr. as the Reform Party nominee in 2000, something that caused him to quickly drop out.
So, now that it’s serious, we’ll take a serious look at the man—specifically as it relates to 401(k)s. A common trope is to judge a person’s character by how they treat service workers (a horribly condescending measure, but it suits our purposes). More specifically, how might he treat financial services in general, and the 401(k) industry in particular, were he to become El Presidente? The answer can be gleaned in how he treats his own workers.
Citing 5500 filings, Bloomberg took a look at Trump as plan sponsor last summer, when his presidential routine first got rolling. It reports his matching contributions were actually “more generous than average.” If a worker contributed 6 percent of their salary, Trump would kick in 4.5 percent.
“But there’s a catch,” according to the news service. “You can’t even join the plan until you spend a year as a Trump employee. Call it an apprenticeship. Then, if you want that matching contribution, you have to wait until the end of a calendar year. Leave—or get fired—in October, and you get nothing.”
Even if the employee stayed, it added, Trump’s contribution wouldn’t completely belong to them for six years, a vesting schedule that’s “the slowest allowed under U.S. law.”
Under Bloomberg’s rating system for 401(k) plans, Trump scored a 30 out of a possible 100, “lower than all but one of the top 50 companies by market capitalization. It scored one point back in 2011 when Trump wasn’t matching contributions at all.”
The plan scores a 59 under the rating system at BrightScope, which called the Trump plan “below average” for its peer group.
So yeah, the man who would be president doesn’t rate well, but at least he offers a plan. Yet as with so much about Trump, is it all simply for show?