Since the 1960s, almost every U.S. president has acknowledged he should not personally profit off the job – or, at least, should avoid the appearance of doing so. Early in their terms, Democratic and Republican leaders alike have issued ethics guidelines for their administration. President Donald Trump did so shortly after taking office in 2017, using some of the same language as Bill Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s ethics pledges.
This year, President Trump has not made such a promise.
He did not sign an ethics pledge for his presidential transition process, as is called for by law. And hours after being sworn into office, he rescinded former President Joe Biden’s ethics rules – without issuing a pledge covering his own administration.
Why We Wrote This
U.S. presidents traditionally have been expected to keep their own financial interests separate from political ones. President Donald Trump’s actions have defied norms and are causing some ethics watchdogs to say new laws are needed.
Even if Mr. Trump does eventually sign such an order, it’s unclear who will enforce it. In his first week in office, he fired the director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, as well as 17 – or about 1 in 4 – of the inspectors general who serve in watchdog roles at various federal agencies (disregarding the 30-day notice to Congress required by law).
Of course, pledges themselves don’t guarantee ethical behavior by presidents or their administrations. During his first term, Mr. Trump raised ethical red flags by refusing to divest or put his financial holdings in a blind trust as did other presidents, saying that he would maintain a “wall of separation” between himself and The Trump Organization, which would be run by his sons. Foreign dignitaries frequently booked stays at Mr. Trump’s golf clubs and hotels throughout his tenure, which critics called a blatant form of currying favor. And Mr. Trump himself spent substantial amounts of time at his own properties during those four years, often with other high-level government officials – at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money.
Now, less than three months into his second term, experts on ethics say Mr. Trump is pushing boundaries in new ways, reaping millions of dollars in the process. They also say that, given the prominence of business dealings in Mr. Trump’s own life and in his family, it becomes hard to know whether personal interests are operating alongside his political priorities for the nation, in actions ranging from tariff negotiations to a reshaping of government.
“In the first administration, what Trump was doing to make money off his presidency closely mirrored how he had always made money,” says Jordan Libowitz, communications director for the nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW) in Washington. But this second Trump term, he says, “is shaping up to be fundamentally different, both in type and scale.”
To the president’s supporters, such concerns are overblown. Mr. Trump has long had a reputation as an aggressive businessman unabashedly pursuing wealth and success, they say – and now he’s doing it for the country as well as for himself. Whether he’s following every ethics guideline or worrying about possible conflicts of interest doesn’t so much matter as long as he’s delivering results for America. Many also point to the business dealings of President Biden’s son Hunter as an example of how other first families have blatantly profiteered off the power of the presidency.
“President Trump’s assets are in a trust managed by his children. There are no conflicts of interest,” Anna Kelly, deputy press secretary for the White House, emailed in response to an inquiry for this article.
Still, ethics watchdogs say presidential self-dealing appears to have reached an unprecedented scale, with potentially huge amounts of money at stake. CREW estimates that during his first stint in the White House Mr. Trump made, at a minimum, hundreds of millions of dollars – separate from the question of whether ethical lines were crossed or not. That far exceeds the $400,000 salary that he has declined. And it doesn’t include other administration officials and advisers with apparent conflicts of interest who could benefit personally from access to information and influence.
Tesla cars on the White House lawn
Before Mr. Trump returned to the White House in January, Amazon successfully bid $40 million – almost three times the next highest bid – for a documentary about Melania Trump, more than 70% of which is reportedly going directly to the first lady, The Wall Street Journal reported. A December article, also in the Journal, described CEOs “rushing to curry favor” with Mr. Trump, including by donating millions to his inaugural fund.
Unlike in 2017, The Trump Organization this year has not pledged to pause any foreign real estate deals, only agreeing not to transact with foreign governments. Still, LIV Golf, which is funded by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, rented Mr. Trump’s Doral, Florida, golf course for a tournament this past weekend. And a new Trump Tower is being built in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Last month, Mr. Trump held what amounted to a live advertisement for Tesla cars at the White House with CEO and “special government employee” Elon Musk, who afterward signaled he wanted to donate $100 million to the Trump political operation (Mr. Musk was the top donor in the 2024 campaign, giving nearly $300 million to Republican candidates and groups). On March 19, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Americans to “buy Tesla” stock during a Fox News appearance.
“We’ve never seen anything remotely like this before,” says Richard Briffault, a Columbia law professor and reporter for the American Law Institute’s project on principles of government ethics.
Rebecca Blackwell/AP/File
To be sure, Washington has had its share of ethics scandals in the past. There was the Crédit Mobilier scandal in the 1860s, when Washington politicians got kickbacks from a new railroad construction, and Teapot Dome in the 1920s, when the interior secretary accepted bribes from oil companies. There was Watergate in the 1970s, when President Richard Nixon’s reelection campaign secretly used donor money to spy on Democrats and his administration covered it up.
But “None of these examples [involved] a president having business interests where he was directly benefiting from his decisions as president,” says Kedric Payne, senior director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center. With the first two examples, the politicians in question at least could argue that they were trying to deliver railroads or energy for the American people. And when the Watergate scandal was exposed, President Nixon resigned.
The “presidential loophole”
The U.S. Constitution establishes that conflicts of interest should be viewed as a grave threat to the body politic – especially when foreign governments are the ones seeking influence. Presidents are prohibited from accepting foreign gifts by the Constitution’s emoluments clause. Some lawsuits during Mr. Trump’s first term charged he had violated this standard, but the Supreme Court moved to dismiss those cases as he left office. One challenge is that the Constitution does not lay out a clear mechanism for enforcing the emoluments clause, and Congress has yet to pass legislation to do so.
Moreover, the president and vice president are technically exempt from federal conflict-of-interest rules, since as heads of the entire government, they can’t just recuse themselves from specific policy matters. Congress hasn’t addressed this “presidential loophole” surrounding potential self-dealing, or expanded the financial disclosure requirements.
“All the way through Obama,” presidents generally followed the expectation that they wouldn’t use their own name to make money while serving in the White House, says Richard Painter, who was chief White House ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration. Mr. Trump broke that norm in his first term, Mr. Painter says, “But it’s gotten much more extreme.”
Mr. Trump has made money from licensing agreements for years, lending his name to various forms of merchandise, a practice that he’s continued since reentering the White House. According to a 2024 candidate disclosure form, while running for office that year Mr. Trump earned $300,000 in royalties from “God Bless the USA Bible,” a $60 Trump-endorsed Bible that includes copied text of the U.S. Constitution, Pledge of Allegiance, and the chorus of Lee Greenwood’s song “God Bless the USA.” Mr. Trump also earned almost $4.5 million in royalties from the book “Letters to Trump” and over $500,000 in royalties from the book “A MAGA Journey.”
Additionally, between T Retail LLC and T Tower Retail LLC, Mr. Trump took in more than $5.5 million from retail goods, not including Trump Ice LLC, which brought in over $100,000 from Trump-branded spring water. He has put his name on gold watches costing up to $100,000 each. GetTrumpSneakers.com, where supporters can buy gold “Never Surrender” high-tops for $399 and preorder “Victory 47” cologne for $199, reiterates in its fine print that the site “has nothing to do with any political campaign.”
But while putting his name on bottled water and pricey watches may mark a break from presidential decorum, along with maintaining his real estate business, it may pale in comparison with the profits Mr. Trump stands to make from his publicly traded media company and cryptocurrency, say experts.
“There are only so many hotel rooms you can book. There are only so many rounds of golf one can play,” says Mr. Libowitz. “Trump moved from physical goods and properties to digital ones.”
Truth Social and Trump meme coins
Trump Media & Technology Group Corp., which manages the president’s social media site, Truth Social, went public a year ago and roughly doubled Mr. Trump’s net worth, putting him back on Forbes’ list of 400 richest people. Over the past few months, the company has had wide swings in share prices, with some analysts arguing that DJT – as it is known by ticker – is overvalued.
The potential conflicts of interest here are considerable: A foreign government, for example, could buy up shares and gain leverage over the president of the United States.
Then there are the meme coins – $TRUMP and $MELANIA – that launched days before Mr. Trump’s inauguration. Meme coins, a type of highly volatile cryptocurrency originating from an internet meme, are viewed skeptically even by many in the crypto industry. $TRUMP’s market cap surpassed $14 billion shortly after launch, but has since fallen to $2.2 billion. Cryptocurrency prices briefly jumped in March when Mr. Trump signed an executive order to create a “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve,” saying the move would help the nation harness “the power of digital assets for our prosperity.”
But cryptocurrency values are only one part of the moneymaking equation: Coin issuers like Mr. Trump’s business entities make money on both coin sales and trading fees. By some estimates those fees have reached $100 million for the Trump coins. “He makes money on crypto whether it goes up or down,” says Mr. Payne. “For Trump it’s just win, win, win.”
As the nation’s chief executive, the president has an unrivaled megaphone.
“I LOVE $TRUMP – SO COOL!!! The Greatest of them all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” wrote Mr. Trump on his media site, Truth Social, on a recent Sunday. Within the hour, the price of his meme coin, $TRUMP, had surged 12%.
