Financial woes haunt Trump
Dark days lie ahead with loans due soon, cash depleted, resorts losing millions of dollars yearly
Not long after he walked across the White House grounds Wednesday for the last time as president, Donald Trump stepped into a financial minefield that appears to be unlike anything he has faced since his earlier brushes with collapse.
The tax records that he has long fought to keep hidden, revealed in a New York Times investigation in September, detailed his financial challenges:
Many of his resorts were losing millions of dollars a year even before the pandemic struck. Hundreds of millions of dollars in loans, which he personally guaranteed, must be repaid within a few years. He has burned through much of his cash and easy-to-sell assets.
And a decade-old IRS audit threatens to cost him more than $100 million to resolve.
In his earlier dark moments, Trump was able to rescue businesses he runs with multimillion-dollar infusions from his father or licensing deals borne of his television celebrity. Those lifelines are gone.
And his divisive presidency has steadily eroded the mainstream marketability of the brand that is at the heart of his business.
That trend has only accelerated with his evidence-free campaign to subvert the outcome of the presidential election, which culminated in the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. In its wake, his last-ditch lender vowed to cut him off. The PGA canceled an upcoming championship at a Trump golf course, and New York City moved to strip him of contracts to run several venues.
Trump’s family has portrayed his departure from office as opening new opportunities that were closed off while he was president. His son Eric, whohas helped run the Trump Organization, recently told The Times that the company expected significant demand for overseas branding deals involving Donald Trump. The family has also considered starting a media company to connect with his supporters.
“There has never been a political figure with more support or energy behind them than my father,” Eric Trump said in a statement. “There will be no shortage of incredible opportunities in real estate and beyond.”
But without a new lender, or a newline of revenue that does not require a large investment of time and money, the former president is likely to face hard choices, including possibly being pinched into selling underperforming golf courses or his hotel in the Old Post Office Building in Washington.
After prior challenges, Trump portrayed himself as a comeback kid, someone who independently rose above financial adversity by striking fabulous new deals. What he hid from view was the degree to which his father’s fortune and a second fortune of entertainment money — the combined equivalent today of nearly $1 billion — provided a reservoir of cash that could cover repeated failures.
As his entertainment fortunes faded, Trump filled part of the resulting gap with a $100 million mortgage on Trump Tower’s commercial space, and by selling off nearly all of his stocks and bonds, a total of more than $270 million for 2014 through 2016.
But nowhe faces loans coming due: $100 million on Trump Tower next year; $125 million on his Doral golf resort in Florida in 2023; and $170 million on the Washington hotel in 2024. Trump personally guaranteed most of that debt, which means the lenders could pursue his other assets if he cannot pay or refinance.