How Much Do Trump’s IRA Plans Resemble the Australian Superannuation System?

President Donald Trump’s new push to expand retirement savings options for millions of Americans apparently draws inspiration from Australia’s compulsory superannuation system, which the president has praised in the past, although his program lacks key similarities with the Aussie system.

Days after signing an executive order creating TrumpIRA.gov, a federal portal designed to steer workers without employer-sponsored retirement plans toward low-cost payroll deduction accounts, Trump and his economic advisers once again mentioned the Australian system, contemplating whether the United States should move closer to the superannuation model, which requires employers to contribute 12% of workers’ pay into retirement funds.

Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, said on May 1 that the administration was working with the Department of the Treasury and members of Congress to come up with something “that’s pretty close or in the direction of the Australian system,” before Trump quickly interjected, “Or better,” during an Oval Office briefing in front of reporters.

The remarks followed previous comments from Trump in 2025 in which he said he was looking into mimicking the Australian system.

The president’s latest executive order, signed earlier this month, focuses primarily on implementing the Saver’s Match program enacted under the SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022, providing federal matching retirement contributions of up to $1,000 for lower-income workers, beginning in 2027. The order also directs Treasury to launch TrumpIRA.gov by January 2027, featuring vetted individual retirement account providers that offer low-fee investment options and no minimum balance requirements.

Administration officials have signaled that the website and federal match are only the opening phase of a broader effort.

“To take it to the next level, we need congressional approval,” Trump said during the signing ceremony for the executive order.

Retirement Savings Gap

The comparison to the Australian system comes as policymakers in both parties grapple with a longstanding gap in the American retirement system: Roughly four in 10 adults lack retirement savings in either an IRA or an employer-sponsored account, according to Gallup polling. Small business workers, independent contractors and part-time employees are among the least likely to have access to workplace retirement plans.

The Australian system has increasingly attracted attention in Washington because of its near-universal coverage and massive accumulation of long-term investment capital. Under Australia’s framework, employers are legally required to contribute a percentage of wages into professionally managed retirement funds that follow workers from job to job.

Still, retirement experts interviewed about the administration’s plans cautioned that the similarities may be more rhetorical than structural.

“I just don’t think the U.S. administration has a very deep understanding” of the Australian system, says John Mitchem, a retirement policy consultant and principal of JM3 Projects. He argues that three defining elements of Australian superannuation—mandatory employer contributions, pooled “unitized” investments and automatic portability between jobs—are largely absent from the Trump proposal.

Where There’s Overlap, Where There’s Not

Mitchem says the U.S. is more likely to embrace automatic enrollment with opt-out provisions than a legally mandated contribution system.

Other analysts see the administration pursuing a more limited version of Australia’s superannuation system that emphasizes portability, low fees and federal incentives, rather than mandates.

Dennis Simmons, executive director of the Committee on Investment of Employee Benefit Assets, which represents large corporate retirement plan sponsors, describes the initiative as “Super Lite.”

“It feels more like an attempt to replicate the ‘results’ of the Australian system—portability and professional management—without the mandatory employer contributions that make the Australian model so robust,” Simmons says. He adds that the Trump administration appeared focused on extending institutional-quality retirement products to workers in the gig economy and small businesses who currently lack access to sophisticated plans.

The Saver’s Match itself could become the centerpiece of that effort. The program replaces the little-used Saver’s Credit and offers direct government matching contributions to qualifying workers who save in retirement accounts. Treasury officials estimate that single tax filers contributing $2,000 and earning less than $20,500 annually will qualify for the full match, with phased-down benefits extending to workers earning up to $35,500.

Supporters say the federal contribution could help overcome one of the biggest weaknesses in the American retirement system: low participation among lower-income workers, who often cannot afford to save.

Morningstar recently estimated that a federal auto-enrollment IRA system, combined with an enhanced Saver’s Match, could add between $981 billion and $1.35 trillion in retirement savings over a decade.

Yet questions remain about what exactly the White House envisions. Mark Iwry, former senior adviser to the secretary of the Treasury for national retirement policy and currently a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who helped shape retirement policy in prior administrations, says the Trump team had not clarified which aspects of the Australian model it hopes to emulate.

“Some pension policy people admire the Aussie superannuation system’s 12%-of-pay employer contribution mandate as a means of expanding retirement coverage,” Iwry says. “It’s not at all clear, though, that this controversial feature is what particularly interests the current administration.”