Washington, New York This week, Donald Trump succeeded in what he was unable to do for a long time: With his new media plans and the possible financing through a listed investment vehicle (Spac), the ex-president, who has been banned from Twitter and Facebook, has not only attracted the attention of social media drawn.
In the end, they were anything but smooth: The Trump Organization, in which Donald Trump and his children combine the various business areas from high-rise buildings to hotels and golf clubs, has suffered from the pandemic. Many offices are also empty in the famous Trump Tower in the heart of Manhattan. The luxury hotel in Washington is looking for a buyer.
On the Trump Organization’s website, the fireworks are still exploding in the background of the hotels in Chicago, New York, Las Vegas and Hawaii. But the group, now run by Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr., is sitting on $ 1.3 billion in debt, according to Forbes. Some of these will be due in the coming years.
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Donald Trump himself also recently fell from the American pedestal of the super-rich: For the first time in 25 years, the ex-president is no longer on the list of the 400 richest Americans from “Forbes”. At 2.5 billion dollars, according to the calculations of the business magazine, he still owns as much as the year before when he landed at 339th place.
The name “Trump” should be from the facade
But the other billionaires increased their fortunes and passed him by. His net worth is also $ 400 million below the $ 2.9 billion he hit in 2011. If one were to take inflation into account, the comparison would be even worse.
Finally, the sale of the Trump Hotel in Washington should help save the Trump Organization’s financial position. The former post office has been up for sale since 2019. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the Miami-based CGI Merchant Group plans to take over the hotel for more than 370 million.
CGI then wants to work with hotel operators such as Hiltons Waldorf Astoria and delete the Trump name. So far, the words “Trump International Hotel” have been hanging in gold letters above all three entrances, with US flags blowing in the wind above them. Without the signs, it would hardly occur to you that the building belongs to the Trump empire. Because from the outside it is far less ostentatious than other properties owned by the ex-president.
The hotel is located on world famous Pennsylvania Avenue, between the White House and Congress, within sight of the National Archives and numerous museums. The facade is kept in a subtle beige, the many oriels and pointed gables are more reminiscent of a Romanesque church than a five-star hotel. The building is one of the oldest in Washington, a clock tower with a clock face stands out from the cityscape. It is one of the few buildings that are legally allowed to be higher than the dome of the Capitol.
But the pandemic has not left the Trump Hotel unscathed. Like many city centers in America, Washington’s City has been swept clean, and of course the change in government has contributed to Trump employees leaving the capital in droves. The hotel used to be the top location for Republicans, diplomats and lobbyists.
They celebrated and established networks in the lobby, where Trump kitsch meets industrial charm: chandeliers, marble tiles and glittering columns are part of the furnishings, but open steel structures and a glass atrium give the hall a trendy loft look. In Trump’s time, the two restaurants that serve steak and sushi were regularly booked out.
Now the bars are only open in the evenings, and the “Day Spa by Ivanka Trump” is also running at a reduced rate. Recently, an employee in front of the main entrance informed, only hotel guests are allowed to enter the building. A look through the glass door shows: there is almost no one there.
The focus on hotels and offices has hurt in the pandemic
Strictly speaking, the Trump Organization only leased the property for 100 years and not bought it because the former post office building is still state-owned. The Trump Organization can now resell this leasing contract. Originally, the president’s family wanted $ 400 to 500 million.
But even the now discussed price of 370 million dollars is still twice what the Trumps spent on converting it into a luxury hotel. In return for a lease for three million dollars a year, they had promised a complete renovation for 200 million dollars.
The reason for Trump’s ailing business is not least the focus on hotels and offices. They did particularly badly in the pandemic, as the 2020 figures he published to the Ethics Committee for US Government Agencies show.
In total, Trump’s various divisions turned over $ 278 million in 2020, compared to $ 446 million in 2019 before the pandemic. In the Old Post Office Hotel in Washington, Trump posted sales of $ 15 million. That was, however, significantly less than the more than $ 40 million in the previous year.
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Trump only discloses sales in the documents, not profits or losses. The situation is different with the hotel in Washington: Since the hotel in the old post office officially belongs to the state, the responsible committee of the House of Representatives had a look at the report to the landlord. It found the hotel lost a total of $ 70 million between 2016 and 2020.
“Far from a successful investment, the Trump Hotel was a ramshackle business with debts that had to be bailed out by President Trump’s other business units,” write the members of the committee to Robin Carnahan, the General Services Administration executive who runs the Washington hotel’s property managed.
But it’s not just the hotels that have suffered. Sales at “Trump Restaurants” also fell from $ 3.4 million to just under $ 550,000 in the 2020 pandemic. The business of the golf clubs, on the other hand, only posted minor losses thanks to the rapid reopening.
Forbes magazine blames the ex-US president himself for his poor performance in the rich ranking. “Five years ago he had the golden opportunity to diversify his wealth,” writes the magazine. Immediately after the 2016 election, federal ethics officers urged Trump to sell his real estate.
“That would have allowed him to reinvest the income in broadly diversified index funds and take up his post without conflicts of interest,” writes Forbes and calculates that Trump would use this strategy today with assets of seven billion dollars and thus in 133rd place Rankings would be.
Instead, Trump only left the management of the Trump Organization in the hands of his eldest sons Eric and Donald Jr. placed. The family is therefore invested in ailing hotels and offices and in golf courses – a sport that the younger generation no longer wants to know much about.
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