The Trump Organization was looking battered just last year. Its businesses had already been convicted of criminal fraud. It was hit with a civil judgment of more than $450 million. Its longtime chief financial officer had been incarcerated (twice).
But as Donald Trump returns to the White House, his family real estate company is set for a revival that echoes his political comeback. Two lines of business that changed the most since he first took office — licensing the Trump name overseas and running golf and resort properties — are particularly equipped to profit.
To ethicists, it’s a recipe for influence-peddling, especially after the Trump Organization cast aside aspects of its earlier promises to limit conflicts of interest.
Inside the close-knit company, which has only tightened its inner circle, such concerns are dismissed — and hopes are high.
“There’s no question: We’re living the best days the Trump Organization has ever had,” Eric Trump, the president-elect’s son and the business’s day-to-day leader, said in an interview.
When Donald Trump is sworn in as the nation’s 47th president, he will be more than twice as rich as he was when he first took office. The family’s widening business interests stand to pose conflicts with few parallels in U.S. history.
In many ways, the wild ups and downs of Trump’s political fortunes — the initial upset in 2016, the two impeachments, felony convictions and the stunning return in November — have obscured the remarkable arc of the business that primed his political ascent in the first place.
First billions
Trump, 78, will enter the Oval Office as one of the world’s richest people, with a net worth of $7.2 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The majority of his wealth, on paper, comes from his stake in Trump Media & Technology Group, the social media company-turned-meme stock that bears his initials as a ticker.
His first billions, though, tie back to the Trump Organization. In January 2017, his estimated net worth was $3 billion. By January 2021 that figure slipped to $2.5 billion, as the pandemic upended the property values underpinning his wealth.
Though the company is private, the president-elect’s personal financial disclosures post-2016 offer a glimpse of changes at the family business since his first term.
Income from golf and resort properties soared by 60% between 2016 and 2023. The company has been on a deal spree abroad, particularly in the Middle East, where it leased its brand to new projects in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. It also struck a licensing deal for a Serbian property being developed by Affinity Partners, the investment firm of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Trump handed management of his company to his sons and put his assets in a trust — measures that critics say weren’t enough to fully divorce him from the business empire. The Trump Organization’s new ethics plan loosened one previous restriction: while new deals with foreign governments are off limits, it doesn’t rule out pursuing deals with foreign companies.
Novel conflicts
Of course, Trump brings novel conflicts to his second term.
In addition to his publicly traded social media company, he and his sons now promote a crypto venture.
Donald Trump Jr., while still an executive vice president at the family business, has joined Omeed Malik’s “anti woke” 1789 Capital, was named to the board of PSQ Holdings, which runs a marketplace for “patriotic” businesses, and was tapped to advise prediction market Kalshi.
Kushner, a senior adviser during Trump’s first term with a focus on the Middle East, has built Affinity into a more than $4.5 billion firm largely with money from sovereign wealth funds in the region. Trump has a new Middle East adviser within the family: Massad Boulos, his daughter Tiffany’s father-in-law. (Boulos has come under scrutiny for embracing the billionaire moniker when in fact his known holdings suggest he’s nowhere near one.)
Trump’s eponymous organization will always be at the center of the president-elect’s personal myth-making. Now, in turn, his second term in the White House stands to bolster the company itself.
“Trump changed everything,” said Kedric Payne, general counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit focused on government ethics.
Loyalists leaving
The Trump Organization is moving forward with a shrunken inner circle.
Ivanka Trump, who once oversaw development and acquisitions alongside her two oldest brothers, stepped away in 2017. Longtime fixer and counselor Michael Cohen and former Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg left under the swarm of legal conflicts that mired the company for years. Two of the Trump Organization’s companies were convicted of criminal tax fraud.
In a separate civil fraud case in New York, a judge found that Trump, members of his family and the company violated state laws by lying about the value of its properties to receive favorable loan terms. Trump’s lawyers are appealing the decision, which resulted in about half a billion dollars in penalties. The legal saga overlapped with a shift in the company’s center of gravity toward Republican-led Florida, home of several Trump golf properties and his Mar-a-Lago resort.
The man now largely left in charge of navigating the firm is Eric Trump. He said one of the most significant changes he made at the company was in tackling its debts. In 2021, Vornado refinanced 1290 Avenue of the Americas and 555 California, generating a cash windfall for the Trump Organization through their 30% stake in the properties. The following year Trump’s sale of the Old Post Office hotel in Washington wiped out $170 million of debt and brought in more cash.
Soon after, the organization refinanced a $100 million debt on Trump Tower and $125 million on Trump National Doral, both of which were set to mature. The deals, both with Axos Bank, were well timed, coming before interest rates began to soar. Trump also paid off several smaller loans completely. Still, the fate of the civil fraud penalty hangs over the company’s cash position.
In the absence of Weisselberg, who went to jail for dodging taxes on corporate perks and a second time for perjury, Mark Hawthorn and Michael Levchuck have top financial roles.
The company is on notice: Barbara Jones, the independent monitor appointed in the civil fraud case, was tasked with watching over its finances in 2022.
“There’s never been a time in the Trump Organization’s history where we’ve had a stronger, better or more successful company,” Eric Trump said.
More Golf
Compared with eight years ago, the Trump Organization has become more dependent on its golf and resort properties, spread across New Jersey, Florida, Ireland, the UK and elsewhere. Trump reported some $350 million in income from those properties in 2023, a sum that encompasses hospitality, food and beverage sales and hotel rooms — along with top-dollar charges for tee times.
“Our initiation fees are as high as they come,” Eric Trump said of the company’s golf resorts.
Those steep prices raise red flags, according to Payne, the Campaign Legal Center general counsel, who added they can be hiked at any time.
Trump National Doral near Miami brought in $129 million in 2023, more than any other golf property. The Trump Organization on Wednesday sealed approval to add a 1,500-unit luxury condominium complex at the Doral resort, a project that could cost as much as $3 billion. In April, it will host LIV Golf, the tour financed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, for the fourth-straight year — though the first with Trump as the sitting US president.
In the Trump Organization’s 2023 year-end snapshot, LIV Golf gets top billing, followed by the “Monumental Sale of Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point.”
It doesn’t mention that Trump’s branding was removed from the course in New York’s Bronx borough.
Middle East
Meanwhile, the Trump Organization is deepening its ties in the Middle East through licensing arrangements for residential properties in the geopolitically turbulent region. New deals struck since Trump’s first term span Jeddah, Riyadh and Dubai.
The Trump Organization’s ambitions — and associated conflicts — are particularly clear in a project located in Muscat, the capital of Oman.
The company partnered with Dar Global, the international real estate arm of a Saudi property developer, on a project for a luxury villa community and 18-hole golf course, to be completed in 2028. Trump reported earning $2.5 million from the Oman project on his 2023 disclosure.
Oman is strategically important to US diplomacy, including as a back channel to Iran.
Other licensing deals, including newer properties in India, have yet to appear in the president-elect’s financial disclosures. Developers are licensing the Trump name for residential projects in Gurgaon, Hyderabad and Noida, and for a commercial project in Pune, near Mumbai.
Eric Trump said he’d also like to see the company pursue tie-ups in the Maldives, Argentina and in European capitals, like Paris and Vienna.
Richard Painter, who was chief ethics lawyer to President George W. Bush, said he objects to any president’s name being used in private enterprise and fundraising outside of government, including Joe Biden’s on the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. Trump’s licensing deals, though, are on a vast scale, he said.
“It’s just cash in return for his name,” Painter said. And “his name is difficult to separate from the presidency.”
Hotel Harbinger
Hotel management, once a more significant source of income for Trump, has been waning since his first term began.
One in Hawaii ditched the Trump name in 2023. The company exited properties in Panama and Canada years earlier. (Trump has suggested the US should take over the Panama Canal and annex Canada since his election win.)
A plan to create mid-priced hotel chains, called Scion and American Idea, was scuttled in 2019. Eric Danziger, the senior executive who led the hotel group, left in 2022 and has since retired.
One hotel in particular could be a harbinger of changes during Trump’s next term.
The Old Post Office, the stately Washington property that was once the Trump International Hotel, lost the affiliation after the company sold it in 2022, and it became the Waldorf Astoria.
The hotel — located less than a mile from the White House — became a flash point in Trump’s first term, with watchdog groups calling it an avenue to curry favor with Trump by booking rooms and event spaces and running up dining bills.
A handful of lawsuits filed in Trump’s first term accused him of unconstitutionaly profiting from his presidency, zeroing in on the hotel. None of the legal challenges succeeded. The Supreme Court ended two after Trump left office.
The Trump Organization appears to be eyeing the Old Post Office building again. It’s in early-stage talks to take it back over.
“We were probably the most canceled company in the country,” Eric Trump said of the Trump Organization circa 2017. Now, he said, it’s a different story.
