U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick shared on the All In podcast Thursday that he managed to sell 1,000 Gold Cards in a single day. Each Gold Card, which provides its holder with U.S. citizenship, is valued at $5 million, meaning the program brought in an impressive $5 billion in just 24 hours.
“And by the way, yesterday I sold 1,000,” Lutnick mentioned during the podcast.
Earlier, Lutnick had discussed the Gold Card initiative as a potential means to help reduce the U.S. national debt. He suggested that if 200,000 Trump Gold Cards were sold, they could contribute $1 trillion towards addressing the debt.
Expanding on the idea, former President Donald Trump speculated that selling 1 million Gold Cards could bring in $5 trillion, and that selling 10 million could generate an extraordinary $50 trillion—enough to wipe out the national debt entirely.
During the podcast, Lutnick recounted how the Gold Card concept was initially sparked by a discussion between John Paulson and Donald Trump. They proposed selling visas rather than issuing them for free, which led to Lutnick being brought into the conversation to help structure the program. Lutnick also revealed that the software needed to implement the Gold Card system is being developed by Elon Musk’s team, and it is expected to be ready in about two weeks.
Lutnick provided further details about the Gold Card, explaining that it serves as a replacement for the traditional green card. Gold Cardholders will be granted permanent residency in the U.S., and although they can apply for citizenship, Lutnick noted that most would likely avoid it. This is because U.S. citizens are subject to global taxation, whereas the Gold Card offers the privilege of residing in the U.S. without this tax burden. Each Gold Card costs $5 million.
Watch the video above.
{Matzav.com}
It means that wealthy people can just buy more privilege, without being vetted. Or taxed. Just great.
And criminals, terrorist etc can buy themselves a legal way here?
Please correct the article.
In the first paragraph, it incorrectly states that the card grants citizenship. This is not correct.
As it states in the last paragraph, it is the equivalent to a green card.
Selling citizenship would be a problem, because that also means selling the ability to vote to potentially foreign powers. This is also probably why becoming a citizen for these people will not only be not advantageous for tax reasons, as the article mentioned, but because the vetting and waiting period will be much more intense in order to ensure the applicant is genuine.
Shmekt vie Rish’us.