Donald Trump fails to find place in 'Forbes 400 list' for first time in 25 years: Report

Former US President and real estate mogul Donald Trump has slid off the Forbes 400 list of America's wealthiest people for the first time in 25 years, according to the magazine. Trump's net worth is the same as it was a year ago, but he has lost USD 600 million since the COVID-19 pandemic began, a Forbes report claimed. The report stated that Trump's net worth is estimated to be around USD 2.5 billion, leaving him USD 400 million short of making the Forbes list this year.

During the pandemic, technology stocks, cryptocurrency, and other assets have performed well. However, Trump's big-city properties, which account for the majority of his wealth, have underperformed, knocking him out of the country's most elite club. According to the report, Trump had a perfect opportunity during the US Presidential polls in 2016. Federal ethics officials were pushing Trump to sell his real estate investments shortly after the elections, which would have allowed him to reinvest the gains in broad-based index funds and assume office free of conflicts of interest. However, Trump had decided to keep his riches. "After deducting debt, they were worth an estimated $3.5 billion at the time," claimed Forbes report. 

Others in the executive branch have little choice but to follow the advice of ethics officials. People who have assets that could be in conflict with their jobs in government-run the risk of breaking the criminal conflict-of-interest law. The President, on the other hand, is free from the law, as Trump had proudly stated before entering the White House in 2016 that he could genuinely manage his business and run government at the same time. Donald Trump was consistently ranked in the top half of 'The Forbes 400' from 1997 to 2016. However, things went from bad to worse the year he was elected president and now he has gone completely off the list after a five-year decline in the ranks, the report stated. 

44 new entrants in the Forbes 400 list

The 400 wealthiest Americans are now worth $4.5 trillion, up 40% from last year, and their ranks have been bolstered by the inclusion of 44 new entrants, the highest number of newcomers since 2007. The second-richest newcomer, 29-year-old cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, is the youngest newcomer with an estimated fortune of $22.5 billion. In comparison to last year, more than twice as many persons joined The Forbes 400 this year, with over two-thirds of them generating their wealth in finance and technology, according to the magazine, according to the magazine. 

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