Trump’s math and his Gold Card

At the end of February Donald Trump proposed a $5 million “gold card” for U.S. residency. It would also include a tax loophole in which gold-card holders would not be subject to taxes on their overseas income.“I think it’s going to sell like crazy,” said Trump at his first Cabinet news conference, It’s a bargain.”

 

Dominic Volek who caters to the global rich at Henley & Partners, says he’s already fielded calls from clients wanting to purchase a Trump gold card. He added, approximately 135,000 of the world’s millionaires (worth at least $1 million) are projected to migrate to a new country in 2025. The United Arab Emirates and the US typically top the list of destinations (but not all of them!). 

 

This said, there are just 8.5 million people worldwide who have a net worth over $5 million, obviously not sufficient to buy that $5 million gold card as they wouldn’t have one penny left. One would need, it seems, $10 million to practically do it and there are just 2.8 million of these people in the world. A more “comfortable” net worth threshold would be $20 million, but there are only 250,000 of these rich folks. 

 

That didn’t prevent Trump from gloating that his Gold Card idea could expunge the entire $36 trillion budget deficit, he simply forgot to mention that it would require selling 7.4 million such cards. Good luck!