There are approximately 800 billionaires living in the United States with a combined net worth approaching an astonishing $6 trillion, said Forbes. All told, America hosts nearly a third of the world’s estimated 2,781 billionaires. Within that elite congregation, there exists an even more exclusive tier for the country’s wealthiest: those tapped to be a part of President-elect Donald Trump’s upcoming administration.
A billionaire himself, Trump’s decision to staff his pending White House with fellow ten-figure figures (eight so far) has made his administration worth “more than the GDP of 169 different countries,” at least $350 billion, said U.S. News & World Report. Even excluding figures like Elon Musk and onetime GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy (both tapped for the misleadingly-named advisory panel called the Department of Government Efficiency), Trump’s proposed Cabinet alone is estimated to top $13 billion in net worth. This is thanks to nominees like former WWE executive Linda McMahon, onetime software mogul and current North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (R), and Wall Street titan Howard Lutnick. Here’s what to know about this massive accumulation of executive branch wealth.
Is this unusual or unprecedented?
If confirmed as planned, Trump’s will be an “administration of unprecedented, mind-boggling wealth” that would break the record set by his previous term in office by “billions of dollars,” Axios said. Although politicians in this country have traditionally “been wealthier than most Americans,” Trump’s billionaire Cabinet plan marks an “escalation of what’s been a consistent feature in American politics,” Axios said in a separate article. Although “wealthy Americans who have had successful careers in business have long served in government,” said The Washington Post, Trump’s “high concentration of ultra-wealthy picks” opens the door for “distinct conflict-of-interest risks” and undercuts the president-elect’s populist campaign messaging.
Trump’s second term picks “throws into stark relief the relative impoverishment” of President Joe Biden’s Cabinet, said The Guardian, even as Biden was “repeatedly derided by Trump as representative of a corrupt governing elite that was cheating ordinary working Americans.” The Biden administration Cabinet, estimated to have a total worth of around $118 million, is “comfortable, sure, but it’s the length of the Acela corridor (and then some) from the $6.2 billion combined net worth of Trump’s [first term] crew or the $2.8 billion fortune of Barack Obama’s second-term team,” said Forbes.
This is “not something we’ve seen in modern times,” said Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington Executive Director Noah Bookbinder to The New Republic, although you may find “similar things” if you look “back to the Gilded Age and times of real corruption and real kleptocracy in government.”
How could this affect governance?
By tapping billionaires to “lead key economic departments,” Trump has raised questions on “whether his administration will follow through on promises to boost the working class,” The New York Times said. Although it’d be “foolish” to say that billionaires should be excluded from public service wholesale, Trump’s abundance of high net worth nominees stands in contrast to “all the post-election chatter about Democrats and ‘elites,'” said MSNBC‘s Steve Benen.
Trump’s stacked nominee slate is an “early test” of his ability to “unite a transformed Republican Party.” He will attempt to bring together the party’s “populists who say they are focused on elevating the working class” with “business leaders and wealthy donors who have long shaped the party’s policies,” The Washington Post said.
Among Trump’s inner circle, however, the reliance on billionaires is a sign of strength, in which their private sector successes are proof positive of their governmental capacity. “We have billionaires who have created companies now helping to clean up a bad economy, clean up a government where we don’t have efficient spending and run the country like they run their businesses much like Donald Trump,” Trump attorney and newly named counselor to the president Alina Habba said to Fox News. “That’s why he is a billionaire.”
Ultimately, warned Bookbinder to The New Republic, there are “two major problems” that come with an administration packed with billionaires. “One is very specific conflicts of interest,” in which officials may be given responsibilities that overlap with their personal wealth. More generally, “you want to have a government that looks out for the American people.” With billionaires at the helm, there’s a “real risk that that government is going to broadly govern for the benefit of the very wealthy rather than in the interest of regular people.”