“We want universities to spend their endowments on their students, not themselves”
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The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which Trump signed on December 22, 2017, created a 1.4% excise tax on the net investment income of large private university endowments (26 U.S.C. 4968), and the July 2025 reconciliation law he signed raised that tax on the largest endowments — concrete, enacted pressure on the endowment wealth he criticized in this October 2016 promise. However, neither measure requires universities to spend endowments on their students: the tax revenue goes to the Treasury, and no enacted policy conditions endowment treatment on student spending. Acting on the endowment-tax lever without securing the promised student-spending outcome is credited as PARTIAL.
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