Donald Trump "bankrupted" a golf course in Puerto Rico, leaving taxpayers there on the hook for $33 million worth of debt. A Trump company was unable to save a floundering Puerto Rico golf club and resort from bankruptcy after entering into a management and brand licensing agreement with its owners in 2008.
One of President Donald Trump's favorite recreational activities is golf. Robert Reich, author and former Labor secretary, claims in an Oct. 19 post to his Facebook page that the hobby is subsidized by U.S. taxpayers.
Donald Trump did not set Coco Beach Golf and Country Club on course for ruin, but he wasn’t able to save it from that fate. His role in the bankruptcy of the company, which ended up costing Puerto Rican taxpayers $32.6 million, was significant but limited.
Overall expenses for Trump's travels to New Jersey and Florida were estimated at $6.4 million a year, and security costs charged by local governments are reimbursed by the federal government, according to Trump Golf Count.
Donald Trump "bankrupted" a golf course in Puerto Rico, leaving taxpayers there on the hook for $33 million worth of debt.
His role in the bankruptcy of the company, which ended up costing Puerto Rican taxpayers $32.6 million, was significant but limited. That $32.6 million loss constituted 0.03 percent of the territory’s total $123 billion debt, which prompted the Puerto Rican government to file for bankruptcy relief in May 2017.
By October 2011, Coco Beach had defaulted on $26 million in bonds and had to seek another round of financing. In 2015, the company filed for bankruptcy under its original name, Coco Beach Golf and Country Club, citing debts of more than $78 million but only $9 million in assets. Bankruptcy court records show that Puerto Rico’s Tourism Development ...
Further, for this lack of success, Trump International garnered a total of $609,607 in management fees between 2008 and 2012. (This figure is likely the source of Lainie Green’s reference to a “$600,000 paycheck” received by Donald Trump.)
What's False. Puerto Rico had been hard hit by a recession, and the club had taken on substantial debt and was suffering annual losses for years before Trump's company intervened.
The continued operations of the Partnership are dependant [sic] upon the ability of the Club to attract customers and control operating expenses. Trump International Co. (Club Manager) has developed a plan to achieve and maintain positive operating cash flows sufficient to allow the Partnership to continue as a going concern. In particular, the Club Manager [Trump International] has developed programs to attract members and use the Club, while containing operating costs.
Green’s account of the episode got some facts right, but it also left out some important context necessary for any assessment of Trump’s responsibility for the bankruptcy of the golf course.
In 2008, Trump signed two deals: a licensing agreement to rename the club Trump International Golf Club Puerto Rico, and a management agreement to position Trump to handle the club’s operations in exchange for a share of its annual revenue and a slice of the profit. A document stated that as manager, Trump International Co.
The Florida Democratic Party said that Trump’s “golf course on the island defaulted, like so many of his other failed business schemes. The failure left Puerto Rican taxpayers with a nearly $33 million bill.”
The reality TV mogul signed two deals with the club in 2008, one a licensing agreement to name it Trump International Golf Club Puerto Rico, and a management agreement which gave Mr Trump control of the club in exchange for a slice of the profit.
Mr Trump has been criticised for not paying enough attention to the American territory since successive storms battered the island, destroying infrastructure and leaving the country without electricity.
Accusations come after US President blames Atlantic ocean for lack of aid to island. Donald Trump is facing fresh scrutiny over the bankruptcy of a golf club he managed in Puerto Rico after blaming the Atlantic Ocean for his Government’s inadequate response to Hurricane Maria’s devastation.
Mr Trump's son Eric told Bloomberg News in 2015 that the family had "zero financial investment" in the golf course. "This has absolutely nothing to do with Trump. This is a separate owner. We purely manage the golf course," he said.
Amy Siskind, a prominent Hillary Clinton campaigner, has said Mr Trump needs to “pay them back”.
While the bankruptcy did leave taxpayers with a huge bill, Politifact – an American fact checking organisation – judged that Mr Trump could at most only be held partly responsible, despite promising to turn the business around.
By this May 25, the president had visited a Trump golf course 266 times, CNN reported.
Sophie Germain has kept track of the president's golfing and its costs at the Trump Golf Count site since his 2017 inauguration. USA TODAY has reached out to her for comment.
Trump has played golf during 24 of 96 trips to Bedminster since the beginning of his presidency, according to a table maintained by TrumpGolfCount.com. But Kessler questioned the practice of attributing travel costs for the president and his support staff exclusively to golf.
The rate was $165,000 per hour in 2019, according to the Pentagon, as reported by USA TODAY. Post reporter Philip Bump reported Trump made 19 trips to Mar-a-Lago between January 2017 and February 2019.
Using the same data for a February 2019 report, the Washington Post estimated Trump's trips to Mar-a-Lago alone cost the U.S. taxpayer approximately $64 million during his first two years in office. Roughly $10.6 million was spent on operating costs for government aircraft and boats and $3 million on temporary duty costs including transportation, ...
As for Trump's trips to Bedminster: The president owns a house in the New Jersey suburb, so members of the press are not allowed access to the club, according to Trump Golf Count .
The Washington Post, July 20, 2018: "Trump says golf is his ‘primary form of exercise.’ We talked to an expert about how effective that is."
All the while, the course's expenses increased 22%, including Trump's management fees, which were about 4.5% of annual revenues, or more than $600,000 by the end of 2012. Ultimately, with about $78 million in debt and only $9 million in assets, the golf club sold for $2 million.
When the Trump International Golf Club in Rio Grande, Puerto Rico, filed for bankruptcy in July 2015 — just a month after Donald Trump launched his presidential campaign — Trump's family did everything they could to distance themselves from the failed project. "This has absolutely nothing to do with Trump. This is a separate owner. We purely manage the golf course," Eric Trump told Bloomberg at the time.
The 13-story Trump hotel should have been a sun-kissed shoreline landmark. Instead, the project remains 40% incomplete, and the developer has become ensnared in a corruption investigation. See full story .
In 2006, Trump and billionaire condo king Jorge Perez began selling a 23-story apartment building near Trump's exclusive club, Mar-a-Lago, but the project was abandoned a year later because of slow sales.
In 1994 a group of Chinese investors bailed Trump out of a debt-laded property on New York City's Upper West Side but kept him on as a 30% partner. Twelve years later they flipped the property for $1.76 billion and used the proceeds to buy 1290 Avenue of the Americas in midtown Manhattan and the 555 California Street in San Francisco. See full story.
Mehta attended the University of Pennsylvania, like Trump and three of the president's children. The Trump Organization "took a bold bet on India several years ago," Mehta says. "Recognizating that it is a complex market, they have been flexible and willing to go above and beyond."
Alex Shnaider, the developer behind the Trump International Hotel & Tower in Toronto, reportedly made moves to take the New York developer's name off the building in 2015, after Trump started running for president. See full story .
From 2008 to 2012, it lost between $5.8 million and $7.2 million annually. In 2012 it had just 63 members, and only four had bought condo units. Mainland players weren't flocking to Coco Beach, and revenues from the Puerto Rico Open were steadily declining.
Initially, the Trump-branded club did try to make a splash despite the tough economy. In 2008, it hosted the PGA Puerto Rico Open, and used the tournament to kick-start the condo sales.
So by the time the club and the Trump Organization were first joining forces, Puerto Rico's unemployment rate was already climbing. It rose from 10.6 percent in March 2008 to an eventual peak of 17 percent in May 2010.
Puerto Rico had lost a powerful economic driver the previous year: the so-called Section 936 federal tax write-off for companies with money-earning subsidiaries on the island.
The magazine quoted Eric Trump as saying, "The PGA tournament served as the ideal platform to debut this one-of-a-kind project to such an important audience."
Once in a Bloomberg interview, Trump's son Eric Trump emphasized that the family had never had ownership stake in the property. "We have zero financial investment in this course," he said. "This is a separate owner. We purely manage the golf course."