In their 2020 list, Trump was in 339th place, down from 275th place in 2019. Earlier this year, Forbes reported that Trump had lost $1 billion—over one-third of his wealth—during his presidency.
However, Forbes estimates Trump’s worth at $2.5 billion, meaning he is still extremely wealthy. But this figure leaves him $400 million shy of getting on the list of the 400 richest Americans.
Trump lost an estimated $600 million over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In an article explaining how Trump has fallen off the list, Forbes senior editor Dan Alexander noted: “From 1997 to 2016, Donald Trump maintained a spot in the top half of the Forbes 400. But things took a turn for the worse the year he won the presidency. After five years of dropping in the rankings, he’s now off the list entirely.”
Alexander made a similar argument in April when Forbes reported that Trump’s estimated wealth had declined from $3.5 billion to $2.4 billion since he took the oath of office in January 2017.
Trump did not divest himself of his real estate assets when he became president - a decision that was controversial and raised ethics questions. Previous presidents had divested from their businesses. Perhaps most famously, former President Jimmy Carter placed his peanut farm into a blind trust when he took office.
Alexander argued on Tuesday that if Trump had divested his real estate assets, he could be richer today, estimating that Trump would have had $2.4 billion at the start of his presidency if he had sold off the real estate and paid the necessary taxes.
“By plowing that $2.4 billion in an index fund tracking the S&P 500, for example, Trump’s fortune would have ballooned to $4.5 billion by now, leaving him 80% richer than he is today. His refusal to divest, in other words, cost him $2 billion,” he wrote.
While Bezos tops the Forbes list, he is joined in the top five by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Google co-founder Larry Page. Sergey Brin, the other co-founder of Google, placed sixth.
UPDATE 10/5/21 8.10 a.m. ET: This article was updated to include more information.
