Trump’s ‘gold card’ visas were supposed to solve the $39 trillion national debt. They’ve only sold one

Whether or not you agree with President Trump’s methods to drum up revenue to assist with the government’s balance of payments, economists largely welcome the fact that at least the White House is talking about deficits.

At the time of writing, the U.S. Treasury is sitting on debt worth just shy of $39 trillion, a pile accumulated under both the Republicans and Democrats. Both sides of the house have looked on as interest payments to service that debt have soared to more than $1 trillion annually.

The second Trump administration has floated various methods to help rebalance the books: Tariffs was one, and “gold card” visas were another.

This time last year, the president outlined his plan to charge rich immigrants $5 million for a gold card—which has green card immigration privileges “plus a route to citizenship.”  “A million cards would be worth $5 trillion, and if you sell 10 million of the cards that’s a total of $50 trillion,” Trump said last year. “Well, we have $35 trillion in debt, so that would be nice.”

He noted that he would have $15 trillion “left over” if he managed to sell 10 million cards, adding: “It may be earmarked for deficit reduction, but it actually could be more money than that.”

Trump encouraged reporters to “remember the words ‘gold card'” last year, and on Thursday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had an update: One person has been approved. “There are hundreds in the queue that they are going through,” Lutnick added to a congressional committee hearing last week.

Despite promising a year ago that gold cards would raise $1 trillion in revenue, Lutnick updated the committee that the “set up” of the scheme has now been completed, and the team “wanted to make sure they did it perfectly.”

While budget hawks will welcome any revenues earmarked for debt reduction, there are some questions over the feasibility of the scheme: More importantly, how many immigrants are wealthy enough to fork out $5 million per card, or $20 million for a family of four.

Therein lies the problem: Knight Frank’s Wealth Report for 2026, published last week, broke down where the globe’s ultra-high net worth individuals (UHNWs) live—defined as people with more than $30m in assets.

While there has been significant growth in regions such as Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Poland, the UHNW populations of each are still relatively small. For example, the Middle East as a whole is home to just 3% of the UHNW population.

Europe as a whole, already home to pockets of wealth in the likes of London and Paris, is home to 22.7% of the world’s UHNW population. North America, on the other hand, is home to 42.6% of the population of the world’s wealthiest.

In other words, the predominant portion of people able to afford gold cards are likely to already live in the U.S. as it is, by far, home to the most millionaires.

Tariff question

Trump had also proposed tariffs as another revenue stream for helping to pay down national debt.

The duties have indeed proved a major boon to the balance sheet, the Yale budget lab reporting earlier this month that tariffs collected in 2025 raised an estimated $214.7 billion in inflation-adjusted customs revenue above the 2022–2024 average, roughly around $300 billion a year.

The method has proved so effective that economists widely expect future administrations to keep the levies in place—despite their unpopularity with foreign trade allies. But under Trump, how the proceeds will be used remains a question.

For example, the president previously said he would be sharing the funds in the form of a $2,000 rebate checks. However, calculations by Fortune found that even if the government were to pay each household—as opposed to each individual—in the bottom 50% of earners, that would still require payouts to more than 67.5 million homes, per data from the St. Louis Fed. That would imply $135 billion, or nearly half of the tariff revenues, would immediately be paid out to citizens instead of being directed toward national debt.

There’s also the question of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget highlighted last month that, taking into account its dynamic effect on the economy, spending and tax breaks in the act will add $4.2 trillion to the national debt through Fiscal Year (FY) 2034 or $4.7 trillion through 2035.

Previously, much of this had been earmarked to be offset by tariffs—which had been estimated to reduce deficits by $2.5 to $3 trillion through 2035. However, in the wake of a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year about the legal basis for 2025 tariffs, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has reexamined its outlook. In March, the CBO wrote that the termination of the tariffs resulted in deficit increases of $2 trillion greater by 2036 than previously projected.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com