Rohit YadavFormer US President and real estate billionaire Donald Trump have slipped off the Forbes 400 list of America’s wealthiest individuals for the first time in 25 years, according to the magazine.
Donald Trump (File Photo)
According to Forbes, Trump’s net worth is the same as it was a year ago, but he has lost USD 600 million since the COVID-19 epidemic began.
Trump’s net worth is estimated to be approximately USD 2.5 billion, leaving him USD 400 million shy of making the Forbes list this year. According to the study, Trump had a wonderful chance during the presidential election season in the United States.
“Federal ethics regulators were pressuring Trump to sell his real estate investments shortly after the 2016 election. That would have allowed him to put the money into broad-based index funds and take office without any conflicts of interest “According to the Forbes article.
The previous US president, on the other hand, had opted to keep his riches. “After removing debt, they were worth an estimated $3.5 billion at the time.”
According to the publication, Trump is responsible for the decline in support.
“If Trump wants to point the finger at someone, he should start with himself.”
Trump had said a few days before taking office that he “could genuinely operate my company and manage government at the same time.”
Trump certainly has significant untaxed profits locked in each of his five most valuable holdings, which he bought many years ago. If he had paid the maximum capital gains tax—23.8 percent to the federal government and 8.8 percent to New York State authorities on every penny he owned—his fortune would have been reduced by roughly $1.1 billion, leaving him with $2.4 billion on his first day in office.
However, what looked to be a great sacrifice at the time might have turned out to be a profitable realignment. Trump’s fortune would have risen to $4.5 billion by now if he had invested that $2.4 billion in an index fund following the S&P 500, for example, leaving him 80 percent richer than he is now. In other terms, his unwillingness to sell cost him $2 billion.
As a result, Trump’s unwillingness to relinquish his real estate assets is expected to cost him at least $2 billion.
Trump could potentially have re-invested $3.5 billion in the S&P 500 on the day he took office if he had managed to avoid capital gains taxes. In that other scenario, Trump would have been worth an estimated $7 billion by September, when Forbes released its annual list, good enough for him to rank 133rd among the country’s wealthiest people. Instead, for the first time in a quarter-century, he has dropped out of the Forbes 400.