Former President Donald Trump came out against the creation of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) on Wednesday and vowed to never allow the Federal Reserve to create one.
“As your President, I will never allow the creation of a Central Bank Digital Currency. Such a currency would give the federal government absolute control over your money” Trump warned at his campaign speech in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. “They could take your money and you wouldn’t even know that it was gone.”
“This would be a dangerous threat to freedom – and I will stop it from coming to America. We are also going to put in place strong protections to stop banks and regulators from trying to debank you for your political beliefs. That will never happen while I am your president”, Trump pledged.
Trump joins Florida Governor and current Presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, Entrepreneur and former Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, and former Presidential candidate Aaron Day in their pledge to stop CBDCs.
In May 2023, DeSantis signed the first-in-the-nation legislation to protect against government surveillance of personal finances bill into law, which prohibits the adoption of a federally adopted CBDC.
“Biden’s Central Bank Digital Currency aims to increase government control over people’s finances, and we will not allow it”, DeSantis said in May.
Samuel Armes of the Florida Blockchain Business Association, which helped to draft Florida’s anti-CBDC bill, said at the time “If CBDC’s are the encroachment on our civil liberties that the majority of people believe they are, we don’t have time to wait. At the end of the day, if the Feds want something, they’re going to try to get it. So it’s our job to try and stop it.”
Trump’s opposition to CBDCs comes just days after Vivek Ramaswamy suspended his campaign for President and endorsed Donald Trump, after coming in a distant fourth in Iowa the caucuses.
Out of the top three current candidates, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley is the only one that has yet to come out against CBDCs.
CBDC’s have been widly discussed and criticized by many over recent months, with opponents warning that CBDCs would give governments complete control over its citizens and could use it to control how you spend your money.
In 2022, the Bank of Canada collaborated with the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the Swedish Riskbank and the Swiss National Bank to study the creation and implementation of CBDC’s, the Post Millenial reported.
China, the Bahamas, Jamaica and Nigeria are among the countries that have already adopted CBDCs and more than 100 countries are reportedly in the exploratory stage, the International Monetary Fund reported.
In March 2022 President Biden signed an executive order urging for the government to begin research and development on CBDCs and called for a full-scale assessment of the potential benefits and risks of CBDCs.