President Trump’s dad, Fred, got rich building 20,000 apartments across New York City. Donald joined Fred’s firm in 1968. From the outset, he was ambitious and ruthless. His first quote in the inaugural Forbes 400 from 1982, when he and his father were listed together, worth a combined $200 million ($660 million in today’s money): “Man is the most vicious of all animals, and life is a series of battles ending in victory or defeat.” Decades later, with Trump in the White House, his family is monetizing those killer instincts in novel fashion.
It’s not that the Trumps are the first to leverage the presidency for profit. Jimmy Carter’s brother, Billy, promoted Billy Beer—and took money from the Libyans. Richard Nixon had his brother Donald’s phone tapped amid concerns about business dealings. Hunter Biden received more than $1 million for artwork of questionable quality. But no first family has used the office to make as much money as Donald Trump’s.
Crypto is the big driver, but additional funds have come from advising right-wing companies in America and partnering with cash-rich firms overseas, especially in the Middle East. Family members who never had significant fortunes of their own—Eric, Don Jr., Barron and Melania—have accumulated tens, then hundreds of millions of dollars. All told, the family (including the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner) is now worth an estimated $10 billion, having nearly doubled its net worth since last year’s election.
Trump’s fortune jumped $3 billion in one year. That 70% gain vaulted him 118 spots on The Forbes 400, where he landed this year at No. 201. His move into crypto accounts for $2 billion of that, split more or less evenly between World Liberty Financial and a memecoin. A New York appeals court gave him a $500 million boost by throwing out his civil fraud penalty, and another $400 million comes from the explosion of his international licensing business. Melania has made money in typical First Lady ways (books, speeches, a documentary) and unquestionably Trumpian ways, launching a memecoin of her own, which has a current market cap of less than $200 million.
In January 2021, the same month his father-in-law first left the White House, Kushner founded the private equity firm Affinity Partners. Leveraging the relationships he’d built as a presidential advisor, Kushner raised $4.6 billion from backers in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE and has invested more than $2 billion in 22 companies. The firm is valued at an estimated $215 million. Thanks in part to Affinity’s war chest, plus his 20% stake (worth $560 million) in his family’s real estate firm, Kushner Companies, Kushner is now a billionaire. It also helps that the couple’s home on Miami’s elite Indian Creek Island, where neighbors include Jeff Bezos, has more than tripled in value to an estimated $105 million since they bought it in 2020.
The president’s second son, worth an estimated $40 million last year, has made more money on crypto than any of his siblings. Most of it comes from American Bitcoin, a crypto mining venture he cofounded in March that went public in early September, briefly making him a billionaire. Some of the hype has faded, but Eric’s 7.5% stake is still worth about $500 million. He also got an estimated 10% cut of World Liberty Financial token sales. With his older brother, Don Jr., he traveled to the Middle East in May, where he signed a deal to license the family name on a golf resort in Qatar, among other new ventures. As of July 2024, the brothers apparently split 20% of the profits from certain licensing deals.
Don Jr. holds a smaller stake in American Bitcoin and serves as a cofounder of World Liberty. He and Eric set up a special purpose acquisition corporation in August that’s on the hunt for merger targets in tech, health care or logistics. He’s also a big player in the anti-woke economy, partnering with self-described “anti-ESG” venture firm 1789 Capital and holding board seats at anti-woke, antiabortion online marketplace Public Square, online firearm retailer GrabAGun and Truth Social’s parent company. His fortune is up from an estimated $50 million last year.
The president’s youngest child was all-in on crypto long before his dad and helped coax the family to cofound World Liberty Financial. “He’s got four wallets or something, and I’m saying, ‘What is a wallet?’ ” Trump chuckled last September at World Liberty’s launch. So far, the 19-year-old NYU sophomore has pocketed an estimated $80 million from token sales and still holds an estimated 2.3 billion locked-up tokens, which Forbes heavily discounts because they can’t yet be traded. If the current price hangs on long enough, he might be able to dump them for $525 million when they unlock.
With additional reporting by Monica Hunter-Hart, Giacomo Tognini, Zach Everson and Thomas Gallagher.