US President Donald Trump made at least $2.2 billion in outside income in his first year back in office, according to a 2025 financial disclosure report released this week. Although the MAGA leader has long maintained that he doesn’t take the annual $400,000 presidential salary, experts are already weighing in on how his massive earnings through money-making ventures are unlike anything seen before.
“There’s just no precedent for this,” said Barbara Perry, a presidential historian at the University of Virginia’s Miller Centre, as quoted by the BBC. “It’s beyond anything we’ve ever seen in the presidency.”
The same startling lack of precedent is reflected in more than 22,000 stock transactions Trump made in 2025, according to an analysis of his over 900-page financial disclosure by the Financial Times. The Republican leader’s stock declarations of the past year are approximately 200% higher than the relatively meagre 13 transactions his predecessor, former President Joe Biden, made over four years.
Even Trump’s own stock transactions in his entire first term (517) are significantly lower than the tens of thousands of declarations recorded last year. Since the purchases and sales in such transactions have only been disclosed in broad ranges, the former may have been as low as $461 million and as high as $1.4 billion. On the flip side, Trump’s sales lie between $138 billion and $433 million.
Which companies’ stocks did Trump invest in?
From tech to lingerie, Donald Trump holds stakes in hundreds of companies, including Papa John’s Pizza, Netflix and Victoria’s Secret.
As highlighted in his 2025 financial disclosure document, Trump’s stock portfolio reveals that he bought shares in several Big Tech giants, including up to $70 million in Microsoft, $67 million in Nvidia, $63 million in Apple, $33 million in Amazon and $21 million in Broadcom.
A financial disclosure report filed with the US Office of Government Ethics on January 14 also indicated that Trump purchased up to $1 million worth of Victoria’s Secret-issued corporate bonds in mid-December 2025.
Beyond his avid interest in major company stocks, Trump’s earnings crossing the billion-dollar-mark were mostly composed of more than $1 billion in income tied to crypto tokens and his cryptocurrency ventures.
Additionally, the POTUS pocketed a total of more than $86 millions in settlements of legal disputes from media companies, including CBS, ABC, YouTube, Meta and X. The document also reveals an investment in gold bars valued at between $500,000 and $1 million.
Trump speaks out
FT’s analysis showed that the president’s stock purchases were made through eight investment accounts.
A spokesperson for the Trump Organization has since told the outlet that the MAGA leader’s “investment holdings are maintained exclusively through fully discretionary accounts independently managed by third-party financial institutions with sole and exclusive authority over all investment decisions.”
“Neither President Trump, his family, nor the Trump Organisation plays any role in selecting, directing or approving specific investments.”
Meanwhile, Trump on Wednesday (US time) appeared to brush off questions about the staggering amount of money reported in his financial disclosure. “I don’t get involved in my personal — we have funds that run my money,” he told reporters before boarding a Qatar-gifted jet that has since become the new Air Force One.
“Well, I’ve made a lot of money before I became president, and they invest my money, and I don’t talk to them. I never — I don’t even speak to them,” he continued. “I don’t know what they call — closed accounts or something. You put your money in, and that’s it. I don’t talk to them, they’re big institutions, and they run it.”
Although the Trump White House has repeatedly refuted claims of conflicts of interest earlier, the president himself appeared to ignore a question on the matter on Wednesday.