Trump's family business takes it down a notch

Storage trailers, an idle dump truck and portable toilets surround the hotel construction site. A sign announces “opening fall 2017,” but residents say they haven’t seen significant activity for months.

It does not look like much, but the unfinished development in this small Mississippi Delta town stands as the only major new deal by the Trump family business since President Donald Trump took office in January.

When the president turned over daily operations of the Trump Organization to his eldest sons, Eric and Donald Jr, they spoke excitedly about picking up where their father left off.

But the crawl toward completing the hotel here reflects how difficult it has been for the company to expand its footprint with Trump in the White House. The Trump Organization has taken on a distinctly un-Trump-like feel this year: Its ambition for new development is subdued, and the signature showmanship for announcing deals is largely absent.

Six months before his election, President Trump told The New York Times that his business had about 120 deals in the works worldwide. The company had just undergone a decade of significant growth, opening five-star hotels in Chicago, Las Vegas and Washington, and snatching up golf courses across the country. 

It had also signed marketing deals that attached the Trump name to luxury towers in global destinations like Istanbul, Manila and Panama City.

Today, the pipeline of potential deals sits at about 30, all in the US, according to the company.In an interview, Eric Trump said the company decided to focus primarily on its existing properties, which consist of 16 golf courses, a winery, seven stand-alone hotels and a portfolio of commercial real estate properties.

As a private, family-run business, the Trump Organization need not answer to shareholders, he said, so it had the freedom to slow new development. That also means the company does not have to disclose how well, or not well, it is performing financially, nor are the identities of partners in the pipeline publicly known.

“We have the best properties in the world; they’re doing extraordinarily well,” he said, without providing details on the company’s financial performance. “And if we have to take a break for an eight-year period of time or a four-year period, then it is what it is.”

Eric Trump said his father’s presidency had complicated the company’s ability to start new deals. The company pledged not to pursue new foreign ventures, and it is vetting potential domestic deals to avoid controversy, retaining Bobby Burchfield, a Washington lawyer, to protect the Trumps from doing business with partners that might have conflicts of interest or checkered pasts.

Eric Trump, who has effectively assumed the role as the leading executive at the company, is also a much more cautious businessman than his father, people who work with the Trumps say.  “Donald is very aggressive, and Donald pushed it while he was active — and they don’t have Donald now,” said Phil Ruffin, a billionaire casino owner who partnered with the Trumps on the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas. “The boys are doing as well as anybody could. I haven’t seen any difference, except they’re not really doing anything new.” 

The difference in management styles partly reflects Eric Trump’s sensitivity to criticism of the company now that his father is in the White House. There is also the criminal investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller III, who may ultimately scrutinize aspects of the family business before he finishes his inquiry.

Since the sons took control of the company, the biggest new initiative has been the rollout of two domestic hotel brands, Scion Hotels and Resorts, a four-star line, and American Idea Hotels, a budget-friendly chain. The company recently posted websites for both chains.

But the Trumps have announced only one Scion business partner, the developers of the hotel here in Cleveland, a city of 12,000 about a two-hour drive from Memphis. The Trumps and their partners have delayed the project as they revised the construction plans. 

© 2017 The New York Times News Service