The former president, who has long obsessed over where he ranks on The Forbes 400, is no longer rich enough to make the list.
an estimated $2.5 billion, leaving him $400 million short of the cutoff to make this year’s Forbes 400 list of America’s richest people. The real estate mogul is just as wealthy as he was a year ago, when he stood at No. 339 on the ranking, but he is down $600 million since the start of the pandemic. Technology stocks, cryptocurrencies and other assets have thrived in the Covid era.
If Trump is looking for someone to blame, he can start with himself. Five years ago, he had a golden opportunity to diversify his fortune. Fresh off the 2016 election, federal ethics officials were pushing Trump to divest his real estate assets. That would have allowed him to reinvest the proceeds into broad-based index funds and assume office free of conflicts of interest.From 1997 to 2016, Donald Trump maintained a spot in the top half of The Forbes 400.
Others in the executive branch have little choice but to listen to ethics officials. People who hold assets that might conflict with their day jobs in government run the risk of violating the criminal conflicts-of-interest law. The president, however, is exempt from that statute, as Trump proudly noted during a press conference nine days before entering the White House. “I could actually run my business and run government at the same time,” he told a crowd of reporters assembled in Trump Tower.
Trump decided to hang onto his assets. At the time, they were worth an estimated $3.5 billion, after subtracting debt. If he had instead chosen to sell off everything, there is a chance that he would have had to pay significant capital gains taxes. Trump acquired his five most valuable holdings long ago, so he likely has huge untaxed gains locked in each of them. If he paid the maximum possible capital gains tax—23.8% to the federal government, plus 8.
Close-mindedness has its costs. If Trump had managed to avoid capital gains taxes, he could have theoretically reinvested $3.5 billion into the S&P 500 on the day he entered the White House. In that alternate scenario, Trump would have been worth an estimated $7 billion by this September, whenlocked in estimates for its annual list, enough to earn a spot as the 133rd-richest person in the country. Instead, he’s off The Forbes 400 for the first time in a quarter-century.
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