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Bibles, Home Alone and perfume: Six surprising ways Trump made money in 2025

Official documents show the US president made billions of dollars as he returned to the White House.

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July 1, 2026
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Bibles, Home Alone and perfume: Six surprising ways Trump made money in 2025

ByDearbail Jordan and Emer Moreau, Business reporters

Published48 minutes ago

Nearly 1,000 pages detailing US President Donald Trump’s financial information have been released, showing how much he made and what he invested in during his first year back in the White House.

We’ve combed through it all, so you don’t have to, and found six of the most interesting bits among the sea of numbers.

1. It’s long. Very long.

Trump’s annual financial disclosure report for 2025, released by the US Office of Government Ethics, runs to 927 pages.

That’s less than Tolstoy’s War and Peace but more – much, much more – than Vice-President JD Vance’s report which is a mere 17 pages.

Both surpass Joe Biden’s disclosure for 2024, his last year in office, which ran to just 11 pages.

2. Merch pays

It pays to put your name on products, especially if your name happens to be Donald J Trump.

The US president made several millions of dollars from adding his distinctive signature to a wide range of merchandise, including his coffee-table book, Save America, which generated $1.8m (£1.38m) last year.

The Trump-embossed Bible made $208,000, while his branded trainers and fragrances – including the Victory 47 perfume for women, which retails for $249 a pop – brought in $67,000.

Maga musicians added around $36,000 to Trump’s coffers last year by buying the “American Eagle” limited edition guitar.

3. Melania’s millions

Melania Trump stands in front of the title 'MELANIA' in large letters at the premier of the documentary film

America’s First Lady Melania Trump made $10.7m from her eponymous documentary, which was produced by Amazon. She was credited as a producer on the film, as well as being its subject.

Amazon spent $40m making the film which followed her in the run-up to Trump’s second inauguration. It generated $7m at the box office according to the figures for 2025.

Melania Trump also made $6m from the sale of a non-fungible tokens – a type of cryptocurrency – and $520,000 from her book, also entitled Melania.

4. Share trading

As well as making more than $1bn from business dealings in cryptocurrency, Trump’s financial disclosure showed a staggering 21,285 share trades during 2025 involving a huge number of companies.

One of these was Nvidia, the tech giant whose chips are deemed to be key to the future of artificial intelligence

Nvidia – which last October became the first publicly-traded firm to be valued at $5tn – has long been at the centre of a tussle between the US and China over trade and national security.

Last summer, Nvidia agreed with the White House that it would invest billions in making its chips in the US, sending its share price soaring.

"A line chart showing Nvidia's share price over time from January 2025 to July 2026. The line rises a little from $138 to nearly $150 in early 2025 before dropping down to below $100 in April 2025. After that it gradually rises overall from April 2025 to around $207 in November 2025, before falling again to around $165 in March 2026, and then peaking at $236 in May 2026, before falling back down to $200 at the end of the time series. There are also 5 annotations on the chart showing various events. The first one is in April 2025, when Nvidia agreed to make AI chips in the USA. The second one is in early August 2025, when Nvidia agreed to pay 25% revenue on H20 chip sales to China. The third one is about a week after this, when over 5 million dollars of stock was bought on behalf of president Trump. The fourth one is early December 2025, when president Trump announced that H200 chips could be sold to China. The fifth and final annotation is shortly after the fourth one, when over 500,000 dollars of Nvidia shares were bought on behalf of president Trump. The source is Bloomberg, which was updated at 12:30 British Standard Time on the 1st of July 2026."

Then in August, the Trump administration said Nvidia had agreed to pay it 15% of revenue generated from selling one of its AI chips to China. Later that month, investors acting on behalf of Trump purchased between $5m and $25m in Nvidia stock.

On Wednesday, Trump maintained a stance that his investments are made on an arms-length basis.

“I don’t get involved in my personal [finances], we have funds that run my money,” he said. “I’ve made a lot of money before I became president, and they invest my money, and I don’t talk to them.”

5. Home Alone deal

Screenshot from Home Alone 2, where Kevin, played by Macaulay Culkin, bumps into Donald Trump in the lobby of the Plaza Hotel

The president has two pensions with SAG-AFTRA, the trade union for American film and television actors. Last year, the pensions paid him a total of $86,532.

Trump appeared in films such as Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, where pint-sized hero Kevin McCallister – played by Macaulay Culkin – just happens to run into the businessman in the lobby of the Plaza Hotel.

His television credits include hosting the US version of The Apprentice and a cameo in the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. He has two pensions because they predate the merger of SAG, the film actors’ union, and AFTRA, for television actors, in 2012.

He quit the union in 2021, after it launched an investigation into his role in the US Capitol riot. It was expected that he would have been expelled from the organisation. His pension was not affected.

6. Damages paid by media firms

Trump’s various lawsuits against media companies netted him $86.5m last year.

The largest payout came from Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram. The filing shows that the company gave the president $24.5m to settle a lawsuit over Trump’s accounts being suspended in the wake of the riots in the Washington DC on 6 January 2021.

Suits against Paramount, owner of the CBS news channel, and ABC News resulted in payouts of $16m apiece.

According to the disclosure, the net proceeds of the lawsuits will go to the Trump presidential library.

Trump also received $22m from YouTube to settle a case he brought over his account being suspended on that platform after the riots in 2021.

That money will be given to the trust that manages the National Mall in DC.

There was payment of $8m to Trump from Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter – now called X after being bought by Elon Musk – after the president was banned from the platform after the riots.

The documents do not say what that money will be used for.