Former President Donald Trump failed to make the Forbes list of 400 richest Americans for the first time in 25 years.
The former president is worth the same as last year. However, technology stocks and cryptocurrencies have thrived in the pandemic, bumping Trump down the list.
Trump, a real-estate mogul, is worth approximately $2.5 billion, which was $400 million below the cutoff for 2021’s top 400. Last year, $2.5 billion was enough to put Trump at No. 339. Trump is down $600 million since the start of the pandemic, Forbes said.
Forbes Senior Editor Dan Alexander said the reason Trump did not make the list this year was because he did not divest his assets when he became president.
“If Trump is looking for someone to blame, he can start with himself,” Alexander wrote. “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.”
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Alexander went on to say that if Trump had decided to divest his assets and invest in the S&P 500, he would be worth $7 billion now and sit at No. 133.
From 1997 to 2016, Trump was in the top 200. His highest ranking was at No. 71 in 2003. However, things went downhill after he was elected president. He dropped nearly 100 spots between 2016 and 2017, from No. 156 to 248. He then moved to No. 259 in 2018, 275 in 2019, and 339 in 2020. When Trump was elected in 2016, his net worth was approximately $3.7 billion. By 2017, it was down to $3.1 billion.
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Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg filled the top three spots on the list. Amazon’s Bezos ranked first for the fourth year with $201 billion, Tesla’s Musk was second with $190 billion, and Facebook’s Zuckerberg was third with $134 billion at the September deadline. Zuckerberg, however, has dropped to $119 billion as of Tuesday, which would have dropped him to No. 6. The Facebook tech mogul recently lost $7 billion after a global Facebook outage on Monday.
There were 44 newcomers to the list this year, including No. 32, Sam Bankman-Fried, the 29-year-old founder and CEO of cryptocurrency exchange company FTX. Melinda Gates appeared on the list solo for the first time, at No. 158. Melinda and Bill Gates split earlier this year. Bill Gates is ranked No. 4.
