Financial minefield awaits Trump as a private citizen

Not long after he strides across the White House grounds Wednesday morning for the last time as president, Donald Trump will step 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 easytosell assets. And a decadeold 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 multimilliondollar 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 evidencefree campaign to subvert the outcome of the presidential election, which culminated in the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. In its wake, his lastditch 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, who has 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 new line of revenue that does not require a large investment of time and money, the soontobeformer 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.

“Trump is so reputationally toxic that a lot of financial institutions won’t want to do business with him,” said Adam J. Levitin, a law professor at Georgetown University who focuses on finance and bankruptcy.