Trump’s huge windfall has few known global precedents

Trump’s profits are a haul once unimaginable for any leader of a liberal democracy, particularly a sitting US president. No modern Western leader has ever publicly disclosed such big windfalls while in office.

The Trump family’s earnings, experts said, have moved him into an echelon of enrichment more associated with strongmen in Russia and Turkey.

His gains were all the more striking because the United States has long positioned itself as a standard-bearer for financial regulation, anti-graft measures and the rule of law. Yet his cryptocurrency earnings highlight an unusually glaring conflict: As president, Trump oversees the regulation of an industry that, as a businessperson, he also greatly profits from.

The White House has denied that Trump or his family had engaged in conflicts of interest, and he has personally brushed aside such concerns, saying this week: “I never speak to any of the people that run the money.”

That reluctance to acknowledge any conflict now makes it harder, experts said, for anti-corruption investigators in countries big and small to combat behavior that the United States, until Trump’s presidency, once condemned.

“How the U.S. behaved was quite influential in shaping international norms,” said professor Liz David-Barrett, director of the Center for the Study of Corruption at the University of Sussex.

Now, Trump’s windfall has undermined the idea “that there is a standard to which we should all be aspiring,” she said. It was now easier for other global leaders to ask “‘Why should I regulate my behavior?’ when the greatest power in the world” is not regulating its president, she added.

Trump is of course hardly alone when it comes to accusations of exploiting public office for private profit.

Berlusconi came to power after a bribery scandal that removed Italy’s ruling class. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has defended himself against charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. He is accused of granting regulatory favors to prominent businesspeople in exchange for gifts or sympathetic media coverage.

Spain’s former prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, has been placed under formal investigation on suspicion of influence peddling, which he denies. And its current prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, recently defended himself in parliament amid corruption allegations against his wife, brother and former political allies.

But the immensity of the Trump family’s profits, experts said, put him into a different league than any of those leaders.

Trump and his family have not been accused of violating the law to achieve their windfall, and he is exempt from laws that would otherwise require senior US officials to sell holdings in companies that might be helped by their political decisions.

Still, the scale of the profits has instead drawn comparisons with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. Putin officially owns only a modest apartment, two vintage Soviet cars, a Lada SUV and a Soviet camping trailer, but critics have claimed that he is the boss of a vast network of oligarchs and state power that have made him one of the richest people in the world.

An anti-corruption foundation that was led by Alexei Navalny, a Russian activist who died in a Russian jail in 2024, said that Putin had amassed a wide array of personal assets. The foundation alleged that those included estates across Russia; yachts in Europe; and a sprawling, estimated $1.3 billion palatial complex on the Black Sea equipped with its own underground, multistory bunker system, with a tunnel to the beach; vast private luxury vineyards; and a hockey rink. Putin denied owning the property.

In Africa, Sani Abacha of Nigeria, a general and former dictator who died in 1998, was accused by the Nigerian government of looting billions of dollars, including money taken from the central bank.

Congolese dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, who took power in a coup in 1965, laundered vast sums through real estate in Europe before he died in 1997. That property included a mansion on the French Riviera and a lavish palace complex in his hometown.

David-Barrett said that the Trump family’s business ventures also drew comparisons with political dynasties in Asia, where leaders had been accused of conflicts of interest between their political activities and their families’ business empires.

Trump’s family business, the Trump Organization, has licensed the Trump name to properties in countries that rely on the Trump administration’s support, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The White House has often rejected concerns over such issues, saying that Trump’s children run the organization, not the president.

The family of Thaksin Shinawatra, a telecom billionaire and the populist former prime minister of Thailand, is among the Asian dynasties that have been accused of abusing their proximity to power. He was jailed for having used his time in office to further enrich his family after, among other things, his wife bought a desirable plot of land from a government agency. Shinawatra said the conviction was politically motivated.

Najib Razak, until 2018 the prime minister of Malaysia, presided over the systematic bilking of billions of dollars from the state sovereign wealth fund, which he helped co-found. It helped to finance a superyacht, fine art and hundreds of handbags found in his wife’s closets. He has been convicted of abuse of power, money laundering and breach of trust, among other charges, and sentenced to more than 20 years in prison so far.

David-Barrett said that increasing polarization in many countries made it easier for leaders to escape accountability.

In a polarized society, voters often view accusations against their chosen political leaders as a politically motivated attack, rather than a legitimate source for concern — leading them to dismiss the claims’ relevance. Or even if voters believe the accusations, David-Barrett said, their loyalty to their parties and leaders can allow them to turn a blind eye to their missteps.

As Trump said of his own dealmaking in January, “I found out that nobody cared.”

That kind of indifference has blunted the ability of traditional checks and balances to hold leaders accountable, experts said. If voters dispute the importance of accusations against their leaders, they may also eventually reject the legitimacy of the watchdogs making those accusations, according to Fernando Jiménez Sánchez, a political scientist who specializes in corruption at the University of Murcia, Spain.

The stain of corruption can still be a powerful political weapon. Viktor Orban, Hungary’s former prime minister, lost power in a recent election after voters turned on him, in part, because of widespread corruption allegations against his government. Transparency International often put Hungary at the bottom of its annual corruption rankings for countries in the European Union.

Yet for many voters in countries run by populists, Sánchez said, “checks and balances in general are seen as just another part of the elite politics they criticize.”

Since Watergate, he added, the United States had helped set the standard for international anti-corruption norms. Now, he said, Trump was setting a different standard that could have the effect of demolishing democratic guardrails and clearing the way for others’ conflicts of interest.

“This,” Sánchez said, “is what is being lost.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.