Donald Trump Isn’t as Rich as He Says…but He’s Still Pretty Rich
“I’m really rich,” Donald Trump boasted last month when he announced he was running for president. A new analysis by Bloomberg confirms that claim, but finds that the real estate mogul and presidential candidate is worth about $7 billion less than he claims.
When he announced his presidential bid, Trump touted a net worth of about $8.7 billion, a figure that soon ballooned to $10 billion. But Bloomberg calculates his wealth closer to around $2.9 billion. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a daily ranking of the world’s biggest fortunes, arrived at the value using both prior-known information and a 92-page personal disclosure form that Trump filed with the Federal Election Commission.
Related: 7 Revelations from Donald Trump’s Financial Disclosure
The federal form that all presidential candidates are required to submit asks only for broad ranges in asset values, not specific sums. Anything above $50 million in value is lumped together in one category, which in Trump’s case left plenty of room for questions about just how valuable some of his assets are. The federal report also doesn’t require candidates to list personal property like art, clothing or real estate that’s for his own use.
The Bloomberg analysis went into much more depth, using figures such as purchase dates, square footage, rental rates and more.
The disclosure form revealed that most of Trump’s fortune comes from real estate holdings, such as the Trump Doral resorts in Florida and Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York City. Other lucrative properties include premier golf courses in the U.S., Ireland and Scotland.
Related: Donald Trump Just Showed Why His Campaign Is Doomed
Trump had valued his golf and resort properties at $2 billion. Bloomberg, using price-to-sales ratios for similar properties, put the value at a combined $570 million.
The Bloomberg methodology also doesn’t put much value in the Trump brand, counting only the cash being held as part of licensing or other business deals. “Trump’s own estimations,” Bloomberg noted, “include much higher values for his brand.”
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Stat of the Day: 0.2%
The New York Times’ Jim Tankersley tweets: “In order to raise enough revenue to start paying down the debt, Trump would need tariffs to be ~4% of GDP. They're currently 0.2%.”
Read Tankersley’s full breakdown of why tariffs won’t come close to eliminating the deficit or paying down the national debt here.
Number of the Day: 44%
The “short-term” health plans the Trump administration is promoting as low-cost alternatives to Obamacare aren’t bound by the Affordable Care Act’s requirement to spend a substantial majority of their premium revenues on medical care. UnitedHealth is the largest seller of short-term plans, according to Axios, which provided this interesting detail on just how profitable this type of insurance can be: “United’s short-term plans paid out 44% of their premium revenues last year for medical care. ACA plans have to pay out at least 80%.”
Number of the Day: 4,229
The Washington Post’s Fact Checkers on Wednesday updated their database of false and misleading claims made by President Trump: “As of day 558, he’s made 4,229 Trumpian claims — an increase of 978 in just two months.”
The tally, which works out to an average of almost 7.6 false or misleading claims a day, includes 432 problematics statements on trade and 336 claims on taxes. “Eighty-eight times, he has made the false assertion that he passed the biggest tax cut in U.S. history,” the Post says.
Number of the Day: $3 Billion
A new analysis by the Department of Health and Human Services finds that Medicare’s prescription drug program could have saved almost $3 billion in 2016 if pharmacies dispensed generic drugs instead of their brand-name counterparts, Axios reports. “But the savings total is inflated a bit, which HHS admits, because it doesn’t include rebates that brand-name drug makers give to [pharmacy benefit managers] and health plans — and PBMs are known to play games with generic drugs to juice their profits.”
Chart of the Day: Public Spending on Job Programs
President Trump announced on Thursday the creation of a National Council for the American Worker, charged with developing “a national strategy for training and retraining workers for high-demand industries,” his daughter Ivanka wrote in The Wall Street Journal. A report from the president’s National Council on Economic Advisers earlier this week made it clear that the U.S. currently spends less public money on job programs than many other developed countries.
