Question: How rich is Trump?

Wealth of Donald Trump





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vt
The net worth of Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States, stood at $3.1billion as of 2018, according to Forbes. Various organizations have estimated and investigated Trump's wealth. Trump has often stated higher values for his wealth than organizations estimating it.
Trust funds
Trump is the beneficiary of several trust funds set up by his father and paternal grandmother beginning in 1949.[1] In 1976, Fred Trump set up trust funds of $1million ($4.4million in 2018 dollars) for each of his five children and three grandchildren. Donald Trump received annual payments from his trust fund, for example, $90,000 in 1980 and $214,605 in 1981.[1] By 1993, when Trump took two loans totaling $30million from his siblings, their anticipated shares of Fred's estate amounted to $35million each.[2][1] Upon Fred Trump's death in 1999, his will divided $20million after taxes among his surviving children.[1][3][4]
Source of wealth
In a sworn deposition, Trump testified that he once borrowed $9.6million from his father, calling it "a very small amount of money", but could not recall when he did so.[5] Trump has since told campaign audiences he began his career with "a small loan of one million dollars" from his father,[5] which he paid back with interest: "it has not been easy for me", Trump told one New Hampshire crowd.[6] Trump has often repeated this claim.[7] In October 2018, The New York Times published an exposé drawing on more than 100,000 pages of tax returns and financial records from Fred Trump's businesses, and interviews with former advisers and employees. The Times concluded that Donald Trump "was a millionaire by age 8",[8] and that he had received at least $413million (adjusted for inflation) from his father's business empire over his lifetime.[9] According to the Times, Trump borrowed at least $60million from his father, and largely failed to reimburse him.[8]
The paper also described a number of purportedly fraudulent tax schemes, for example when Fred Trump sold shares in Trump Palace condos to his son well below their purchase price, thus masking what could be considered a hidden donation, and benefiting from a tax write-off.[9] A lawyer for Trump said the "allegations of fraud and tax evasion are 100 percent false, and highly defamatory". A spokesman for the New York State tax department said the agency was "vigorously pursuing all appropriate areas of investigation".[10] New York City officials also indicated they are examining the matter.[11]
Net worth

Trump was listed on the initial Forbes List of wealthy individuals in 1982 as having a share of his family's estimated $200million net worth.[2] Former Forbes reporter Jonathan Greenberg stated in 2018 that during the 1980s Trump had deceived him about his actual net worth and his share of the family assets in order to appear on the list. According to Greenberg, "it took decades to unwind the elaborate farce Trump had enacted to project an image as one of the richest people in America. Nearly every assertion supporting that claim was untrue. Trump wasn’t just poorer than he said he was. Over time, I have learned that he should not have been on the first three Forbes 400 lists at all. In our first-ever list, in 1982, we included him at $100 million, but Trump was actually worth roughly $5 million — a paltry sum by the standards of his super-monied peers — as a spate of government reports and books showed only much later."[13][14]
After several years on the Forbes List, Trump's financial losses in the 1980s caused him to be dropped from 1990 to 1995, and reportedly obliged him to borrow from his siblings' trusts in 1993;[2] in 2005, The New York Times referred to Trump's "verbal billions" in a skeptical article about Trump's self-reported wealth.[2] At the time, three individuals with direct knowledge of Trump's finances told reporter Timothy L. O'Brien that Trump's actual net worth was between $150 and $250million, though Trump then publicly claimed a net worth of $5 to $6billion.[2] Claiming libel, Trump sued the reporter (and his book publisher) for $5billion, lost the case, and then lost again on appeal; Trump refused to turn over his unredacted tax returns despite his assertion they supported his case.[15]
In April 2011, amid speculation whether Trump would run as a candidate in the United States presidential election of 2012, Politico quoted unnamed sources close to him stating that, if Trump should decide to run for president, he would file "financial disclosure statements that [would] show his net worth [was] in excess of $7billion with more than $250million of cash, and very little debt."[16] Although Trump did not run as a candidate in the 2012 elections, his "professionally prepared" 2012 financial disclosure was published in his book, which claimed a $7 billion net worth.[17]
On June 16, 2015, just prior to announcing his candidacy for president of the United States, Trump released a one-page financial statement "from a big accounting firm—one of the most respected"[18]—stating a net worth of $8,737,540,000.[19] "I'm really rich", Trump said.[18] Forbes believed his claim of $9 billion was "a whopper," figuring it was actually $4.1 billion.[20] In June 2015, Business Insider published Trump's June 2014 financial statement, noting that $3.3 billion of that total is represented by "Real Estate Licensing Deals, Brand and Branded Developments", described by Business Insider as "basically [implying] that Trump values his character at $3.3 billion."[21] Forbes reduced its estimate of Trump's net worth by $125million following Trump's controversial 2015 remarks about Mexican illegal immigrants, which ended Trump's business contracts with NBCUniversal, Univision, Macy's, Serta, PVH Corporation, and Perfumania.[22]
In 2016, Forbes estimated Trump's net worth at $3.7 billion, and Bloomberg $3 billion.[23][24] During the three years since Trump announced his presidential run in 2015, Forbes estimated his net worth declined 31% and his ranking fell 138 spots.[25] Discrepancies in estimates of various organizations is due in part to the uncertainty of appraised property values, as well as Trump's own assessment of the value of his personal brand.[23][26]
In its 2018 billionaires ranking, Forbes estimated Trump's net worth at $3.1billion (766th in the world, 248th in the U.S.).[27] Bloomberg Billionaires Index listed Trump's net worth as $2.48billion on May 31, 2018,[28] and Wealth-X listed it as at least $3.8billion on July 16, 2018.[29]
FEC filings and debt
In July 2015, federal election regulators released new details of Trump's self-reported wealth and financial holdings when he became a Republican presidential candidate, reporting that his assets are worth above $1.4 billion, which includes at least $70 million in stocks, and a debt of at least $265 million.[30] According to Bloomberg, for the purposes of Trump's FEC filings Trump "only reported revenue for [his] golf properties in his campaign filings even though the disclosure form asks for income", noting independent filings showing all three of his major European golf properties were unprofitable.[23]
Mortgages on Trump's major properties—including Trump Tower, 40 Wall Street, and the Trump National Doral golf course—each fall into the "above $50 million" range, the highest reportable category on FEC filings, with Trump paying interest rates ranging from 4% to 7.125%.[31] Mortgages on those three properties were separately reported as $100 million, $160 million, and $125 million in 2013.[32] Trump is a leaseholder, not owner, of the land beneath 40 Wall Street.[33] Other outstanding Trump mortgages and debts are pegged to current market interest rates.[31] A 2012 report from Trump's accounting firm estimated $451.7 million in debt and other collateral obligations.[32] Filings in 2015 disclosed debt of $504 million, according to Fortune magazine.[34] Bloomberg documented debt of at least $605 million in 2016.[23] Trump's outstanding debt was at least $650 million in August 2016, in addition to an outstanding loan of $950 million to the Bank of China and Deutsche Bank (among other creditors) on 1290 Avenue of the Americas, in which Trump is a minority owner.[33]
Trump reported a yearly income of $362million for 2014[35] and $611million from January 2015 to May 2016.[36][36] Trump and his family reported more than $500million of income in mid-2018 financial disclosure forms.[37]
A July 2015 campaign press release, issued one month after Trump announced his presidential run, said that the FEC filing "was not designed for a man of Mr. Trump's massive wealth"[31] and that his "net worth is in excess of TEN BILLION DOLLARS[sic]".[38]
Trump on his own net worth
Trump has often given much higher values for his wealth than organizations estimating it. Trump has testified that "my net worth fluctuates, and it goes up and down with markets and with attitudes and with feelings—even my own feelings."[39] On the same day, Trump's own stated estimates of his net worth have varied by as much as $3.3 billion.[2] Trump has also acknowledged that past exaggerated estimates of his wealth have been "good for financing".[40] Forbes has said that although Trump "shares a lot of information with us that helps us get to the figures we publish," he "consistently pushes for a higher net worth—especially when it comes to the value of his personal brand."[20]
Investment performance
A 2016 analysis of Trump's business career in The Economist concluded that his performance since 1985 had been "mediocre compared with the stock market and property in New York."[41] A subsequent analysis in The Washington Post similarly noted that Trump's estimated net worth of $100million in 1978 would have increased to $6billion by 2016 if he had invested it in a typical retirement fund, and concluded that "Trump is a mix of braggadocio, business failures, and real success."[42]