America’s retirement system is broken. Trump may have found a bold fix

Australia is not a country Americans usually look to for financial advice, but their compulsory superannuation system has done something ours hasn't: it actually follows workers around. You change jobs, the account comes with you. No cashing out early because you're between gigs and need the money for rent, no losing track of some 401(k) from a company that got bought out a decade ago. If Trump's team is seriously studying that model for a portable retirement account here, that's worth taking seriously rather than dismissing as another borrowed idea.

The American system was built for a world where people worked one job for thirty years and got a pension at the end. That world is gone. Gig work, contract work, job-hopping every few years, none of it fits neatly into employer-sponsored retirement plans, and millions of people fall through the cracks simply because their employer didn't offer a plan or they moved before they were vested. A portable account solves a real structural problem, not an imaginary one.

Where we'd want caution is in the mechanics. Australia's system is mandatory and centrally managed, which raises obvious questions about choice and government reach into people's savings. An America First version of this should mean more control for workers over their own money, not less, and it should avoid becoming a backdoor for Washington to direct how retirement funds get invested. Portability is the good idea here. The goal should be freedom that travels with you, not a mandate that follows you around instead.

If the administration builds it that way, it's a genuine fix to a system that has been quietly failing working people for years. If it turns into another top-down scheme with Australia as the excuse, we'll have wasted a good idea on a bad execution.