\n<\/p>\n
President Trump has built a merchandise behemoth unmatched by any other American politician. The vast economy of tchotchkes and trinkets has become a visceral proxy for the energy behind his political movement, with the products acting as billboards for membership in the club.<\/p>\n
Mr. Trump and his family have made millions from the products \u2014 more than $1 million from guitars and at least another $2.8 million from the watches alone, according to annual disclosures from the president. And he misses few opportunities to market the wares. He shows off hats and T-shirts at his political rallies, his coins and colognes in advertisements and his cufflinks and candies to visiting dignitaries in a room next to the Oval Office.<\/p>\n
But most of the merch business operates beyond the Trump family. A sprawling bazaar of third-party sellers hawks unofficial MAGA wares on card tables during parades and next to animal pelts and Jesus figurines at gun shows. At one point, more than 40 storefronts dedicated entirely to Mr. Trump dotted America\u2019s highways and strip malls. They sell everything from Trump-themed coffee grounds to aprons decorated with the president\u2019s face.<\/p>\n
Through dozens of interviews and scores of financial documents, The New York Times mapped the contours of an ecosystem of Trump trinkets that is worth more than $300 million a year, according to one estimate from a market research firm. The reporting reveals that a once-peripheral world of campaign souvenirs has exploded into a wide-reaching marketplace that both feeds off Mr. Trump\u2019s power and reinforces it.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverytime somebody buys a hat and wears it, it\u2019s like a yard sign,\u201d said Ronald Solomon, the president of the MAGA Mall, a retail and wholesale operation based in Florida that sells MAGA merchandise, including at least 160 distinct hats. \u201cIt creates votes for him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Trump\u2019s official merchandise bolsters more than his campaign coffers \u2014 often, it personally enriches the president and his family. He is intent on protecting it, even threatening copycats with cease-and-desist letters and lawsuits. The Trump Organization won a trademark infringement case just this month.<\/p>\n
David Warrington, the White House counsel, said in a statement that the president \u201chas no involvement in business deals that would implicate his constitutional responsibilities. President Trump performs his constitutional duties in an ethically sound manner and to suggest otherwise is either ill-informed or malicious.\u201d<\/p>\n
Davis Ingle, a spokesman for the White House, said Mr. Trump is \u201cmotivated solely by what is best for the American people.\u201d
Mr. Trump has traded on name recognition<\/strong> for nearly his entire adult life. He attached \u201cTrump\u201d in towering letters to buildings in the early 1980s; just a few years later, in 1989, \u201cTrump\u201d was on a board game and an airline he acquired for $365 million. For a few months in 2007, Sharper Image carried the $999 Trump Steaks Connoisseur Collection, promising \u201cby far the best tasting, most flavorful beef that you\u2019ll ever eat.\u201d They didn\u2019t sell well.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump continued his role as chief marketing officer when he entered politics. In the two months before he announced his first presidential campaign in June 2015, his team spent nearly $18,000 printing T-shirts to test their popularity.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump first donned a MAGA hat in July 2015 \u2014 though \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d was not his idea. Ronald Reagan had the slogan printed on buttons and posters during his own presidential campaign in 1980 and Bill Clinton used the phrase when running for president in 1991 and 1992. Mr. Trump was the first to trademark it and to profit from it financially.<\/p>\n His campaign eventually spent at least $2.9 million on hats ahead of the election. By 2016, he had opened an official flagship Trump Store at Trump Tower in New York.<\/p>\n Soon after, entrepreneurs \u2014 not all of them supporters \u2014 spotted an opportunity.<\/p>\n Richard Kligman sold only kites and beach supplies at his store in Myrtle Beach, S.C., in 2016 when something unusual started happening: customers were walking into his store asking for Trump merchandise.<\/p>\n Klig’s Kites, owned by Richard Kligman, sells a large amount of MAGA merchandise across two locations in Myrtle Beach, S.C.<\/p>\n Hunter McRae for The New York Times<\/p>\n Mr. Kligman, who describes himself as apolitical, contacted one of his merchants and asked for Trump flags. The customer demands didn\u2019t stop there.<\/p>\n \u201cIt just became more and more and more,\u201d Mr. Kligman said. When it seemed likely that Mr. Trump was going to win on Election Night that November, he rushed to his computer.<\/p>\n \u201cI immediately emailed my vendor. I said, \u2018I need 500 red hats,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Now half of his store, Klig\u2019s Kites, is devoted to MAGA. He opened a second location in Myrtle Beach and one of his stores was skewered in an episode of \u201cSouth Park.\u201d (A third location was closed late last year.)<\/p>\n Many other unofficial merchants began selling bootleg Trump banners and buttons around the same time as Klig\u2019s Kites. These vendors marketed their wares on sites such as Etsy and eBay, on beach boardwalks and state fairs, in strip mall storefronts. They began producing merchandise in the span of hours, printing slogans freshly uttered by the president onto stockpiles of T-shirts \u2014 fast fashion, MAGA style.<\/p>\n Hunter McRae for The New York Times<\/p>\n But their efforts really escalated in 2020. MAGA-minded entrepreneurs in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and elsewhere \u2014 some of whom had previously worked for carnivals or other businesses crippled by the pandemic shutdowns \u2014 saw an opportunity as Mr. Trump\u2019s re-election campaign galvanized his faithful.<\/p>\n Many of them took cues from Mr. Trump himself, who was increasingly profiting off his policy moves and political tussles. One item in his official store during his re-election campaign was a T-shirt featuring Adam Schiff, the Democratic congressman who was running an impeachment investigation of the president, that referenced an insult from Mr. Trump about the size of Mr. Schiff\u2019s neck. He also sold plastic drinking straws with the description \u201cliberal paper straws don\u2019t work.\u201d<\/p>\n The MAGA merchandise business, however, proved a volatile one. Sales seem to rise and fall with Mr. Trump\u2019s political popularity. His average approval rating, currently hovering around 40 percent, has been slipping for over a year, which could affect demand for products bearing his name.<\/p>\n Many unofficial Trump stores have opened and closed in a boom-bust cycle. A chain in New England that once boasted 22 locations was down to just three by the summer of 2021. A store in Alabama that opened on the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol shut down in March of 2025 and reopened 75 miles south. Around the same time, its owners opened another Trump store in Las Vegas. It closed after five months because they were not allowed to advertise on the Strip, they said.<\/p>\n The Trump Store in Show Low, Arizona.<\/p>\n Jesse Rieser For The New York Times<\/p>\n Last year, there were at least four dozen Trump stores in some 22 states, selling everything from bullet-shaped salt shakers to car fresheners scented like pi\u00f1a colada and looking like Mr. Trump\u2019s face. In eastern Tennessee, in a county that has not voted for a Democrat presidential candidate for well over a century, at least four Trump stores were operating within just 15 miles of one another.<\/p>\n One of them, We The People, in Pigeon Forge, shared a strip mall with the Tennessee Bible Museum and a moonshine depot. On a visit there last year, a reporter for The Times saw $40 Trump garden gnomes sharing space with red, white and blue tinsel Christmas trees dripping with Trump ornaments. The store and other Trump stores throughout Tennessee blasted similar country music and showcased similar wares \u2014 everything from flags blaring \u201cYes, I\u2019m a Trump girl, get over it\u201d to QAnon-branded hoodies and Chinese-produced visors with a shock of yellow highlighter hair.<\/p>\n Lisa Fleischmann, a MAGA superfan and former merchandiser, is always decked out in head-to-toe Trump gear.<\/p>\n Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times<\/p>\n MAGA customers are often devoted to the president<\/strong> with a fervor bordering on the religious, merchants said. They want products that help them recognize their political brethren while taunting their opponents.<\/p>\n When Lisa Fleischmann wore her first Trump T-shirt in 2022, she felt a little nervous walking down the street in Huntley, Ill., a village northwest of Chicago. But she soon discovered that broadcasting her allegiance to Mr. Trump with a T-shirt \u2014\u00a0and later hats, sneakers and necklaces \u2014\u00a0encouraged other Trump fans to do the same.<\/p>\n \u201cYou get the good people talking to you and the bad people stay away, you know?\u201d she said in an interview.<\/p>\n Soon her car and trailers were decorated with Trump signs, and if it weren\u2019t for her homeowner\u2019s association rulebook, her house would be covered with Trump flags too. In the years since, not a day has passed where she wasn\u2019t seen about town in head-to-toe Trump gear.<\/p>\n \u201cNot one day in the last three years,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Hunter McRae for The New York Times<\/p>\n That positive reception gave her the confidence to open her own Trump store, called the Trump and Truth Store, in 2023, where she sold the kinds of merchandise that filled her closets.<\/p>\n \u201cMy whole goal is about getting people to stop being so afraid to show which side they\u2019re on, and stand their ground a little bit,\u201d she said. Her store has since shut down (local authorities said she violated building and sign ordinances, though she said she was being targeted by Mr. Trump\u2019s critics).<\/p>\n What motivates Greg Chapman, a retired engineer who has helped his wife open three Trump stores in Alabama, Nevada and Tennessee, is being in on the joke.<\/p>\n \u201cThe people who come in here have a great sense of humor,\u201d he said. \u201cReally, that\u2019s at the heart of it \u2014 we\u2019ve been accused of worshipping the guy, and nothing could be further from the truth. We laugh with him.\u201d<\/p>\n Others clearly want Mr. Trump\u2019s attention.<\/p>\n Keyan Wilson, the owner of the Trump Store in Gatlinburg, Tenn., told Fox Business it was \u201ca dream come true for my family to just know that Trump knows exactly who we are and where we are and what we\u2019re doing for him\u201d after a she held a video call with the president in her store in 2024.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump has embraced an expanding assortment<\/strong> of official merchandise. Revenue from products plastered with his mug shot, including shirts, mugs and posters, added $1.7 million to his most recent reelection campaign. In 2024, he unveiled a gilded pair of Never Surrender high-tops at a sneaker convention. They cost $399.<\/p>\n He has even ventured into digital merchandise, offering a speculative crypto product \u2014 known as a non-fungible token, or NFT \u2014 that he rebranded as digital trading cards. The project netted him $1.16 million.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump posted millions in profits from a range of products including gold watches, books and digital trading cards, according to a report this year.<\/p>\n Source: United States Office of Government Ethics, annual report for Donald J. Trump.<\/p>\n The president also constantly references his Make America Great Again hats: while dining in the Rose Garden, signing orders in the Oval Office, lunching with the president of Argentina, and even while speaking at a memorial for Charlie Kirk, the assassinated conservative activist.<\/p>\n The Trump family is increasingly in the mix. Last year, the president prominently displayed his son\u2019s book next to the presidential seal on Air Force One and posted on Truth Social a link to the book\u2019s Amazon listing. His granddaughter, Kai Trump, recently promoted her new clothing line with photos taken in front of the White House.<\/p>\n No other sitting president has tried to make money off of the office the way Mr. Trump has, according to several ethics watchdogs. For members of Congress and many federal employees, using public office for private gain is explicitly forbidden by their codes of conduct. There are no comparable rules for the president.<\/p>\n But by fueling the merchandise economy, the ethics experts said, Mr. Trump has created new conflicts of interest and new incentives to leverage his public platform to bolster his own brand.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is so concerning not just because of how it might impact Trump\u2019s specific decisions, but because it might suggest that public service in general is just another way to get yourself ahead and make more money,\u201d said Daniel I. Weiner, an ethics and campaign finance expert at the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy institute. \u201cThat can open the door to a sort of systemic corruption that really can, over the long term, undermine people\u2019s faith in democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n President Trump seems unperturbed by the ethics concerns. At an Oval Office event early last year, he held up a red hat with white embroidery and marveled at it.<\/p>\n \u201cSee that?,\u201d he asked the room, explaining it was sent in by a fan.<\/p>\n In all caps, it read \u201cTRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think we should make some of them, right?\u201d<\/p>\n He is not always so complimentary. His team fired off cease-and-desist letters to online merchants such as CafePress in 2015 and several Republican campaign committees in 2021 for selling unofficial Trump products. In 2024, his campaign demanded that a Republican group in Virginia stop selling products featuring Mr. Trump after the assassination attempt that summer in Butler, Pa., referring to the \u201cbootleg Trump merchandise\u201d as \u201cghoulish activity\u201d and \u201cin extremely poor taste.\u201d<\/p>\n The Trump Organization filed a lawsuit last year against unnamed sellers based in Asia for using the word \u201cTrump\u201d on their merchandise. It accused them of infringing on the \u201cTrump\u201d trademark by offering \u201cinferior imitations” of Mr. Trump\u2019s official merchandise.<\/p>\n This year, a judge issued a default judgment in favor of the Trump team after none of the companies responded to the lawsuit, ordering the 132 largely anonymous sellers \u2014\u00a0with names like hot_years1 and Sports Fans Store \u2014\u00a0to each pay $100,000 in damages, totaling a payout of about $13.2 million.<\/p>\n Whether the Trump Organization will collect is uncertain.<\/p>\n But for a president who thrives on attention, the existence of any Trump product ends up benefitting the brand, said Raji Srinivasan, a marketing professor at the University of Texas at Austin.<\/p>\n \u201cCounterfeits, unsanctioned products, licenses, products coming from Trump Org \u2013 they\u2019re all vehicles for the core Trump brand,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s Teflon-coated, and this just adds more visibility to it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" President Trump has built a merchandise behemoth unmatched by any other American politician. The vast economy of tchotchkes and trinkets has become a visceral proxy for the energy behind his political movement, with the products acting as billboards for membership in the club. Mr. Trump and his family have made millions from the products \u2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47506,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[4014,24018,6625,550],"class_list":{"0":"post-47505","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-maga","9":"tag-merchandise","10":"tag-sprawling","11":"tag-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/47506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Size of Trump\u2019s Personal Merchandising Income<\/h3>\n