Meet Donald Trump, the businessman

Washington: Donald Trump has long been one of the most iconic businessmen in the United States, and he is running for president largely based on the idea that his business skills qualify him for the presidency. However, there are significant questions about the nature of his success and the extent of his wealth. “Trump is running for president based on his business career, and we still know very little about it,” said Dr Chris Oates, Associate at Oxford Analytica.

Trump’s career began in real estate in the 1970s, and he continues to own a number of valuable properties in New York and elsewhere. After falling deeply in debt during the early 1990s, he reformulated his career to focus more on licensing the Trump brand. His brand licensing has included food products, beverages, restaurants, the now defunct Trump University, a menswear line and a board game. Another key element of his brand promotion was reality TV shows, The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice, featuring Trump from 2004 to 2015.

Trump has also been involved in casinos, beauty pageants and a failed American football league. Some analysts estimate that more of his worth today stems from the Trump brand rather than real estate. The Trump Organisation, the holding company for his businesses, is privately held, with his three oldest children serving as executive vice-presidents.

As a businessman Trump is highly competitive, aggressive and extremely confident, according to analysts, people who have worked with Trump and his own books. In his 1987 book The Art of the Deal, Trump writes, “I aim very high, and then I just keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get what I’m after.”

In real estate, he preferred projects that were big in scale and high in status. He frequently uses lawsuits and the threat of lawsuits to intimidate competitors and critics. Trump understood the value of media very early in his career; in The Art of the Deal, he notes that “controversy, in short, sells.”

There is no doubt that Donald Trump is a very wealthy man. The 2015 Forbes 400 list placed him at number 121 in the US, and the 2016 Forbes list of global billionaires listed him at number 324.

However, many analysts have questioned his record as a businessman. He inherited significant wealth from his father. Several sources have reported that Trump would have done as well or better if he had invested his early wealth in the S&P 500 index, but it is difficult to confirm this as numbers vary widely. Trump businesses have filed for bankruptcy four times.

Trump’s exact wealth is unclear. In May, Trump’s campaign said that his net worth is more than $10 billion and that his income in 2015 was more than $557 million. However, in 2015 and 2016, Forbes estimated his fortune at $4.5 billion. In July 2015, Bloomberg estimated his wealth at $2.9 billion. Limited public information on his businesses and the difficulty of assessing the value of real estate properties and the Trump brand make accurate calculations difficult.

Trump’s presidential campaign has drawn on his long history in business, branding and politics. His image as a successful businessman is key to his political support, but it might also be a liability, providing negative examples that might damage his image, such as alleged discrimination against black tenants in the 1970s and the overseas production of the Trump menswear line. It also remains to be seen whether Trump’s presidential run enhances the value of his brand or damages his business interests. His campaign has led to breaks with Univision, NBC Universal, Macy’s and Serta.

— Kerry Boyd Anderson is a writer and political risk consultant