Donald Trump's potential cabinet could be richer than some countries

Donald Trump recently chose conservative activist Betsy DeVos (whose family's estimated wealth is $5.1bn) as his Secretary of Education, in a move criticised by the National Education Association President as detrimental to public education.

With Mike Pence as Donald Trump’s Vice President-elect, experts have been trying to work out who will make up the remainder of his presidential cabinet.

And while there have been no explicit statements from the President-elect, The New York Times and The Washington Post have been speculating about a number of Republican favourites who also happen to be incredibly wealthy. Politico worked out just how wealthy:

• Harold Hamm as Energy Secretary ($15.3 bn)
• Wilbur Ross as Commerce Secretary ($2.9bn)
• Mitt Romney ($250 million)

Added to Donald Trump’s claim of being worth more than $10bn (and given his refusal to release his tax returns, we’d have to go on his words), the US Cabinet, made up of a total of 23 people, would be worth some $35bn.

Using information about GDP in 2015 from the World Bank, QZ compiled a list of countries whose wealth is less than that of the US's potential cabinet, and put it in the below chart:

Trump's potential cabinet would be almost $10bn richer than El Salvador, and almost $3bn richer than Bahrain.

We'll just leave this here...

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