TRUMP, CAPITALISM, AND THE ART OF BRANDING

Trump rose to prominence in during the Reaganite ’80s as an embodiment of wild, entrepreneurial cowboy capitalism in an era of deregulation, the celebration of wealth, and the “greed is good” ethos of Wall Street, enabled by the Reagan administration. Trump’s success was tied to an unrestrained finance capital that loaned him immense sums of money, often with minimal and problematic collateral, to carry through his construction projects. Trump was an extravagant consumer with a three story penthouse at the top of Trump Towers, a 118 room mansion in Palm Beach, Florida Mar-A-Lago that he immediately opened for TV interview segments, and an obscene array of properties. He flaunted a yacht bought from Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, and a personal airplane to jet set him around the world to luxury resorts. Trump was featured on TV shows like Life Styles of the Rich and Famous, and his life-style was the subject of multi-page spreads in fashion and other popular magazines, making Trump the poster-boy for excessive “conspicuous consumption,” of a degree that I doubt Veblen could have imagined.13 Trump’s book The Art of the Deal (1987) provides a revealing portrait of the unrestrained capitalism of the go-go ’80s, as well insight into the psyche and behavior of , hypercapitalist.14 The book celebrates “dealing” and “the art of the deal” illustrated by Trump moving from the family real estate business of Queens and Brooklyn onto the Magic Isle of Manhattan where the Donald moved in his mid-20s to become a celebrated real estate whiz kid. He tells in detail how he transformed the shabby and faded Commodore , across from Grand Central Station, into the Grand Hyatt, which he saw as part of the “Reviving [of] 42nd Street” (pp. 119ff). The centerpiece of the celebration of Deal Artist Donald is the story of the building of “: The Tiffany Location” (pp. 145ff.), which stands as Trump’s most striking construction deal. Trump recounts his moving to Atlantic and beginning to take over and build (195ff),

13 Trump, Capitalism, and the Art of Branding his “Battle for Hilton” with mogul Steve Wynn (225ff), his short time in the United States Football League (USFL), where he ended up with an unsuccessful suit against the NFL and saw the collapse of the USFL and loss of his team (273ff). A highpoint for Trump is his rebuilding of the Wollman Ice Rink, finishing a project under-time and under- budget that the city was not able to do, providing for Trump a lesson on the superiority of free enterprise construction opposed to bungling government projects. Indeed, Trump’s book and his life-endeavor serves as an ideological exemplar of free-market capitalism, with government providing obstruction, obstacles to overcome, and sometimes bureaucratic morass that blocks completely the Donald’s projects which he presents as noble and invigorating for a sometimes faltering economy. Of course, sometimes government can aide construction project and Trump brags about how his father Fred controlled Brooklyn politicos to get his projects done. Donald himself tells of how negotiations with New York city and state officials helped him get tax abatements, contracts, and permits to build his pet projects. Indeed, an important part of the trajectory of Trump’s business life is manipulating government to aid him in his projects and he continues to brag on the campaign trail how he bought and used politicians. Trump’s financial fortunes hit the economic slowdown that followed the Reagan orgy of unrestrained capitalism in the late 1980s,15 and in the 1990s Trump almost became bankrupt. Fittingly, Trump had overinvested in the very epitome of consumer capitalism, buying a string of luxury gambling casinos in Atlantic City. The financial slump hit Trump’s overextended casinos, driving him to put them on the market. The banks called in loans on his overextended real estate investments, and he was forced to sell off properties, his yacht, and other luxury items. Having temporarily lost his ability to borrow from finance capital to expand his real estate business, Trump was forced to go into partnerships in business ventures, and then sold the Trump name that was attached to an array of consumer items ranging from water to vodka, and men’s clothes to fragrances. Trump’s two books Trump: Surviving at the Top (1990) and Trump: The Art of the Comeback (1997) provide an incisive portrait of the

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