Indian developers paid Trump $10.2M in licence fees in 2025, with none of his own capital at risk
Trump's 2025 disclosure reports $10,210,685 in licence fees from his Indian real estate partnerships — money earned by lending his name, with no capital of his own in the projects. Business Today estimated $12 million in August 2025, before the disclosure was published.
What happened
The fees come from a fee-only licensing model: Business Today reported 13 branded projects across six Indian cities, with the Trump Organization investing none of its own capital. The filing lists seven Indian licence-fee lines for 2025 — Gurgaon ($3,637,775 and $1,795,363), Hyderabad, Noida and Pune ($1,500,000 each), Mumbai ($180,850) and Kolkata ($96,697). The total is inside the foreign licence fees counted on money-2026-07-08-097, so it is logged here and not counted again.
Why it matters
Trump personally profits from Indian developers paying to use his name at the same time he set tariff and trade policy toward India, extracting income from a country he was simultaneously pressuring in trade talks.