BY LEXI LONAS
Former President Trump has fallen off Forbes’s list of America’s richest people. Trump’s fortune dropped to $2.5 billion, according to the Forbes 400 on Tuesday, which is $400 million short of the cutoff needed to make the list.
This is the first time in 25 years Trump has not been on Forbes 400, with him on the top half of the list from 1997 to 2016 until he became president. Forbes said Trump could have been worth around $7 billion by September 2021 in an alternative scenario, but his financial decisions took him down a different path.
One decision Forbes said cost Trump $2 billion was hanging on to his assets when he took office in 2017. If he would have put the money in an index tracking fund, he could have earned $4.5 billion by 2021. Another blow to Trump’s fortune was the coronavirus pandemic.
Although cryptocurrencies and some stocks and assets rose during the pandemic, a lot of Trump’s wealth comes from his big-city properties. As businesses and tourism tanked during the pandemic, Trump’s properties also took a hit, according to Forbes.
In April, Forbes’s billionaires list showed Trump dropped 300 spots and his fortune decreased by more than $1 billion during his presidency. The Hill has reached out to Trump’s spokesperson for comment.
Source: thehill.com