Donald Trump Falls Out of Forbes' '400 Richest Americans' List
Former President Donald Trump has fallen out of the Forbes 400 list of America's richest people for the first time in 25 years, despite the fact that he continues to be a billionaire.
Forbes published its annual list of the 400 wealthiest Americans on Tuesday and the former president and New York real estate mogul did not feature. The list was topped by former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
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.
