Washington is experiencing a zenith of entrepreneurship – but not for legitimate business purposes. Instead, President Trump has turned the White House into a gold mine, earning more in the last year than he did in his entire first term. Long-established forms of self-enrichment – such as emoluments violations – have been paired with a dazzling new array of money-making schemes. Many of these tactics are, shockingly, legal, despite their combined effect: a president getting rich off the presidency, a government increasingly captured by the wealthy, and the American public absorbing the costs.
The solution is not simply different politicians, but different rules—ones that are strong enough to prevent profiteering by any president, of any party. In designing those guardrails, reformers should consider how to keep pace with the ingenuity of contemporary corruption. Rather than just blocking the latest tributary for graft, we need to dam the river: a complete ban on presidents profiting from the prestige, power, and decisions they are called on to make.
A Dynamic Ecosystem for Graft
From memecoins to real estate investments to licensing deals for the president’s name, the Trump family is cashing in on the power of the presidency in ever more creative ways. Issuing presidential pardons to campaign donors. Soliciting crypto investments from foreign governments. Hosting political events at Trump properties. Demanding settlements from tech and media companies awaiting federal regulatory decisions. Plus the Qatari jet, the Vietnam golf course, and the Melania documentary. These pursuits may not all constitute “corruption” in the narrow legal sense, but they reflect how most Americans use the term – to refer to a rigged system, where self-serving politicians are above the law.
Relevant lessons can be drawn from peers like Canada, Mexico, and France, which do not exempt their heads of state from conflict-of-interest rules
The president’s myriad routes for self-enrichment are yielding results. The New York Times estimates the president raked in $1.4 billion in profit during his first year in office; the New Yorker puts it at $4 billion. Either way, the sums are staggering – and do not even include the president’s current attempt to secure $10 billion from the IRS by “working out a settlement with myself.” To enable the flurry of financial maneuvers underway, the president has sidelined the usual sources of accountability: inspectors general, law enforcement, the Office of Government Ethics, congressional oversight, and the free press.
The Need for Enduring Reform
For the American people, the consequences of this profiteering frenzy are devastating. Honest businesses report losing out on government contracts after no-bid deals were steered toward the president’s inner circle. Tariffs – an opaque way for the president to extract concessions – are causing household expenses to soar by more than $1,000 this year. Americans are questioning whether costly foreign incursions in Iran and Venezuela, and saber-rattling in Greenland, will benefit the president personally. National security experts were alarmed when sensitive AI technology was transferred to the UAE soon after Emirati investors secretly bought a $500 million stake in the president’s cryptocurrency. More broadly, the crypto industry remains dangerously underregulated—in spite of links with organized crime—in ways that benefit the president’s business interests.
This is not the only domain in which senior officials’ drive for personal profit seems to be warping the usual functions of government. And the cumulative toll is an erosion in trust: only 17 percent of Americans now believe the government will do what is right most or all of the time—one of the lowest levels in nearly 70 years.
More broadly, the problem with allowing a president to profit from public office is not simply distraction; in other words, that a president will be insufficiently attentive to public needs because of his private occupations. It is also not simply that periodically public funds will be directly diverted toward the accumulation of private wealth, though this happens and its consequences can be devastating. Most problematically, it’s that every day, the most consequential decisions a leader can make – to go to war, to regulate industry, to issue pardons – are now distorted. With every decision, narrow financial interests are at risk of overpowering broad public interests – and causing profound damage.
And the public may never know. Distortion is the hardest of the three to detect, let alone prosecute. Distraction shows up in the schedule; diversion shows up in the ledger. Distortion shows up only in the counterfactual — the policy that wasn’t pursued, the regulator who wasn’t appointed, the war that was waged without cause. That is precisely why prophylactic rules, rather than after-the-fact enforcement, are the only adequate response.
In addition, what happens at the federal level could have dangerous ripple effects at the subnational level. If profiteering from federal office becomes normalized, it will almost certainly cascade to state and local governments, where there are myriad opportunities for graft compounded by far less scrutiny, particularly with the decline of local journalism. The stakes for urgent federal action could not be higher.
In this sobering context, it could be tempting to pin all hopes on the next election. Yet doing so would gamble U.S. democracy on the character of individuals and the soft norms of good governance – relying on “naming and shaming” as the primary enforcement mechanism. As we see today, once those norms are blown through, there’s no going back. The electorate grows increasingly cynical while politicians grow increasingly shameless. As such, the new frontiers for profiteering forged over the past year will remain open to all future presidents—unless they are permanently closed.
The Challenge with Traditional Approaches
The conviction that we need systemic solutions has given rise in recent months to a commendable array of proposals, each aimed at curbing a specific form of legalized corruption: the Stop Ballroom Bribery Act, the Ban Presidential Plunder Act, the End Crypto Corruption Act, among others. Each are worth passing on its own terms, as they could yield incremental progress.
But there are several problems with relying solely on this approach. First, it is inherently reactive. Reformers are racing to close off yesterday’s loopholes as tomorrow’s are being invented. That means as soon as reforms are passed, they will already be out of date.
Second, it relies on banning each path of self-enrichment individually—a Herculean task. This piecemeal approach is sure to leave substantial gaps. In addition, the task of defending each of these reforms in court will prove substantial, given current Supreme Court jurisprudence. And each relies on a different mechanism for enforcement, all of which are subject to political pressure.
Finally, most of these policy fixes were designed for an era in which corruption meant quid pro quo exchange—e.g., a bribe paid in return for a government contract. But such exchanges could soon be antiquated. They are not necessary once public and private power have been fully fused, in settings of state capture. Did a company backed by Trump’s sons win a $620 million government contract recently because it was the most qualified? Or because procurement officials felt implicit pressure? It’s unclear by design. Systemic corruption is purposefully ambiguous. That’s why solutions must be scoped broadly enough to remove financial incentives from the president’s decision-making calculus.
Considering a New Approach
In designing next-gen solutions, reformers should focus not only on how to curtail specific sources of self-enrichment, but also how to curtail self-enrichment itself. A so-called “profiteering ban” would prohibit the accumulation of personal wealth while in public office – whether from illegal or legal sources. It would mean the president earns his or her official salary – currently set at $400,000 annually – and that’s it. No side hustles.
In practice, such a ban would require close monitoring of the president’s finances during his or her time in office. This could largely be accomplished through the financial disclosure reports that presidents and presidential candidates already have to file each year and could be paired with a requirement for the president to disclose his or her personal tax returns. What would be new is how those disclosures are used: to ensure that the president’s personal wealth is only increasing as much as their official salary. That would prevent, for example, a president from collecting settlements from the government or private companies while in office.
Ideally, disclosures would be paired with the divestment of all income-generating assets before the start of the president’s term. Divestment would substantially lower incentives for profit-seeking while in office and would better protect against conflicts of interest than qualified blind trusts (in line with the bipartisan Congressional stock-trading proposal). After leaving office, the president could again accumulate wealth, in addition to their official pension of approximately $250,000 per year.
The benefits of such a ban could be far-reaching. Rather than wrangling over whether a particular income stream is legally justified, the profiteering ban would provide a simple, clean standard for public integrity. This approach would be far more efficient than scrambling to outlaw each new pathway for corruption. By prohibiting presidential wealth accumulation across the board, the measure would help restore public trust by closing the gap between the wide range of conduct that most Americans think of as “corrupt” and the narrow scope of what is currently illegal.
A ban could likely be enacted by statute, rather than requiring a constitutional amendment, as it would not introduce any new constitutional standards, including who is eligible to serve as president. Successful business leaders could still hold office – they would just put aside their private interests while in office and resume them afterwards.
Applying Lessons from Other Contexts
In structuring such a policy, the United States could learn from other countries. Globally, 98 countries prohibit “illicit enrichment,” which is defined as the enjoyment of wealth that cannot be justified by lawful sources of income. Ukraine’s pioneering asset disclosure regime requires public reporting of assets, which are then independently audited, as a deterrent for corruption. The UK’s Unexplained Wealth Orders broaden the scope of assets that can be considered illegally obtained, though enforcement results have been uneven.
The aforementioned proposals all focus on illicit sources of enrichment, while the U.S. ban would cover any enrichment beyond an official salary – given the breadth of legalized corruption in the United States. As such, relevant lessons can be drawn from peers like Canada, Mexico, and France, which do not exempt their heads of state from conflict-of-interest rules.
Perhaps the most analogous parallel is actually from the United States, where presidential appointees are already barred from receiving income for “any outside activity performed during that appointment.” Even rank-and-file civil servants are required to divest from assets that pose a substantial conflict with their official duties. Holding the president to the same standard as his or her subordinates is common sense—even more so in the world’s global financial center, where the president’s private business dealings can move markets.
The How and Why of a Profiteering Ban
To be sure, there would be plenty of specifics to work through in fleshing out a profiteering ban. Should it only apply to the president and vice president or also their spouses? What about adult children – who don’t get a government salary but could face increased ethics restrictions? How could the transfer of assets to anonymous shell corporations be prevented? Would certain classes of assets – like passive income from real property or licenses – be excluded? How could the ban prevent deferred enrichment after the president leaves office?
Perhaps most significantly, how would such a ban be enforced? If the levers of enforcement are captured, the laws on the books don’t matter. Meaningful enforcement would require some combination of a far more robust Office of Government Ethics, a revamped ethics agency, a Justice Department more insulated from political pressure, and more vigorous Congressional oversight. In addition, experts would need to structure the proposal carefully in light of the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision, perhaps building on voluntary binding commitments from candidates.
These details all require careful consideration by Congress, advocates, and the public. But that consideration would be well spent – potentially yielding a more comprehensive and lasting policy solution. The ban would not be a silver bullet, rather it can be accompanied by ongoing efforts like ethics reform for Special Government Employees. But the ban could serve as a powerful backup for corruption risk not otherwise addressed. The ban could also provide a substantive focus area for political actors – from both sides of the aisle – who have expressed a rhetorical commitment to anti-corruption and whose leadership will be needed to advance such a proposal.
Just as important as the policy benefits of the proposal, debate over its merits could itself play a powerful role in shaping public narrative. Fresh ideas could prompt the collective imagination of advocates grappling with a new breed of corruption in America. At a time when 65 percent of Americans believe most politicians run for office to serve their own personal interests, a ban on self-enrichment could reinvigorate older notions of statesmanship, integrity, and patriotism, which have been buried under a layer of civic cynicism. The idea that public service should be about genuinely serving the public – not getting rich – has untapped resonance and promising policy implications.
