President Trump has long complained that public office cost him billions. Now he faces the challenge of jump-starting the company that bears his name, while television also beckons.
President Trump’s tax records show signs of financial distress, he claims to have lost out on billions of dollars in income while in office and his eldest sons say the family business has forfeited dozens of potential deals across the globe. Now, denied a second term by voters, Mr. Trump may seek to return to a once-lucrative career in television, this time with a decidedly political bent. His family business will also be free to make up for lost time by once again looking overseas, where hotels and golf clubs helped drive its growth before his election in 2016. Eric Trump and a spokeswoman for the Trump Organization did not respond on Saturday to requests for comment on the business’s post-White-House plans. The president put out a statement disputing the outcome of the election, indicating that he did not believe he had lost. After winning the presidency four years ago, Mr. Trump declined to sell off his stake in the Trump Organization, and instead adopted a plan that he said would eliminate conflicts of interest. Among other things, the Trump Organization pledged to forgo new deals outside the United States and hired an ethics adviser to screen certain domestic ventures. Democrats and others argued that the restrictions were half-measures at best, and indeed the approach did little to prevent the president from turning his resorts and hotels into a hub of favor seeking for lobbyists, donors and corporate chiefs, as The New York Times reported in October. Still, the presidency took a toll on the privately owned family business, which has not closed a new hotel deal since Mr. Trump entered the White House. The company shelved a proposed chain of budget-friendly hotels last year, and Mr. Trump’s financial disclosure statements showed that his top cash-generating properties had largely gone sideways. Without offering evidence, Mr. Trump claimed last year that being president was “probably costing me from $3 to $5 billion.” The ban on new foreign deals probably dealt the biggest blow. Before the presidency, the company was eyeing a major expansion in China; it would even maintain a Chinese bank account and keep an inactive office in Shanghai during the presidency. It had also done exploratory work on new business partnerships in Colombia, Brazil and Turkey. No longer constrained by its self-imposed ethics plan, the Trump Organization is now expected to seek hotel deals and other business, according to several people close to the company.
