One third of Trump’s 2025 revenue came from companies he had just incorporated before taking office
one third of Trump’s 2025 revenue came from companies he had just incorporated before taking office
- Mon, Aug 31 2026 at 3:06 PM
Mark,
President Trump incorporated dozens of new companies in the lead-up to his second term—and never stopped.
Trump filed a financial disclosure in June detailing more than $2.2 billion in revenue he brought in during 2025. A new CREW analysis shows that more than a third of that revenue came from dozens of companies Trump had just incorporated months before.
The timing of Trump’s incorporation bonanza in the weeks leading up to his return to office shows how much more motivated and prepared he was to profit from his second term compared to his first.Trump’s first year back in office was not only more profitable than his entire first term—but also the most lucrative of his life.
$859 million of Trump’s staggering 2025 revenue came from companies and Trump-branded products he has added to his business empire since becoming the presumptive Republican nominee for president in 2024.
CREW’s new analysis of incorporation data shows how, in the final months before the 2024 election and well into his second term, Trump rapidly built his business empire.
He added 74 new companies and products, setting the stage for the profiteering boom revealed in his 2025 financial disclosures—which has only just begun.
In the decade before Trump first ran for office, he was on a corporate incorporation spree—adding an average of 29 companies to his portfolio every year.
But when Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee in May 2016, his business almost entirely stopped incorporating new businesses. From then until the election, his portfolio expanded by just two entities.
Once in office, Trump incorporated four more companies that weren’t tied to his existing businesses. One of them, Trump Media and Technology Group, wasn’t formed until the final weeks of his first term, after he lost the 2020 election.
Of the other three, only two generated any revenue for Trump while he was in office, totaling more than $3.5 million over four years. Most of that came from a company called T Retail LLC, which was established in November 2017 to manage an online store that sold Trump merchandise.
Those millions came on top of hundreds of millions Trump made in office from longstanding properties that special interests and foreign governments used as vehicles to enrich the president while currying favor with his administration.
So while Trump’s corruption in his first term is staggering, it pales in comparison to his second term.
In the three years from when Trump left office in 2021 to early 2024, he created 12 companies and put his name on two books, a set of Trump-branded sneakers and a fragrance. This was a dramatic slowdown from his pace of corporate creation before entering public service.
Then, in March 2024, he became the presumptive Republican nominee for president. Instead of drastically scaling down the number of companies he was adding to his empire, as he did in his first term, he and his family opened the firehose.
In the eight months leading up to the election, Trump’s business empire added 12 more companies, endorsed two books and put his name on a set of personalized watches. Eight of the new companies were tied to foreign developments in the UAE, Vietnam, and India. Four others were holdings for Trump-branded games and crypto products.
When most candidates begin to plan their presidential transition, Trump appears to have been focused on building up his business portfolio. And he was just getting started.
In the two months from his election victory to the inauguration, he added a customized Trump “45” guitar and 24 more companies. This included four to manage his crypto revenue and new foreign developments in India, the Philippines, Hungary, Romania and Serbia.
Our analysis found that Trump has formed at least 34 new companies this term. This began within a few days of taking office and included multiple new foreign developments, an unnamed Nashville development and a mobile phone service.
The data suggests that aside from the wave of crypto revenue that defined Trump’s 2025 income, a second significant wave of foreign income from his new licensing deals will begin to crest in his second year.
In 2025, Trump reported more than $54 million from 12 foreign Trump-branded development deals inked after he became the presumptive nominee for president, spanning the globe and including UAE, Romania, India, Vietnam and the Philippines.
This appears to be the tip of the iceberg. There are several new developments in the disclosure that Trump has yet to report any revenue for. This is the case for all 26 companies Trump has started since August 2025.
Trump appears to have formed 12 new companies this year, suggesting he intends to continue expanding his profit opportunities. Ten have names that indicate they are tied to new foreign developments.
The majority of the money Trump made from these new companies formed after he became the presumptive nominee, more than $797 million, has come in the form of crypto.
Trump has relentlessly melded his presidency with his crypto businesses, with his memecoin being the most profitable. He held two special events for product holders, offering special perks for investors, many of whom have been foreign, willing to purchase the most.
This paid off: Trump reported making $635 million in memecoin royalties in 2025. That total eclipses his revenue, from all sources, in any of the four years of his first term.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of his loyal investors have lost billions collectively as the value of the memecoin collapsed.
$54 million was also reported from his new foreign developments in the Middle East, Asia, and Eastern Europe—developments that Trump hasn’t built, but only licensed his name to.
In other words, he gets paid whether they succeed or fail—or if they’re even built.
Mark, Trump is a public servant by statute, but a profiteer in practice, and he has perfected his craft during his second term. He has hundreds of companies, some formed long ago and dozens formed around his return to power.
Not all of these efforts to enrich himself have succeeded. But even failed efforts make his intention clear: to leave the presidency with as much money for him and his family as possible.
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