Before running for president of the United States in 2016, Donald Trump pursued a career as a businessman, primarily in the sector of renovating skyscrapers, hotels, casinos, and golf courses. His influence in business is publicly known due to his role on the NBC reality show The Apprentice.
His first business experience began during college, where he began investing in Philadelphia real estate. After completing his undergraduate degree in Economics, he began his career in 1968 at his father Fred Trump's real estate company, Trump Management, which he took over in 1971 and later renamed the Trump Organization in 1973. He expanded its business to Manhattan, where his father's financial and political backing enabled him to do his first deals, demolishing and renovating landmark buildings. Trump entered various businesses that did not require capital funding, including licensing his name to lodging and golf course enterprises around the world. Building on his public persona in the New York tabloid press, he later starred in the reality TV show The Apprentice.
Trump partly or completely owned several beauty pageants between 1996 and 2015. He has marketed his name to many building projects and commercial products.
After winning the 2016 U.S. presidential election and being inaugurated in January 2017, Trump resigned all management roles within the Trump Organization and moved his business assets into a revocable trust managed by his sons, Donald Jr. and Eric.
Real estate
Early career
Trump began his real estate career at his father's company, Trump Management, which focused on middle-class rental housing in the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. One of Trump's first projects was the attempted turnaround of the troubled Swifton Village apartment complex in Cincinnati, Ohio, which his father, Fred Trump, had purchased at foreclosure for $5.7 million in 1962, equivalent to $63.2 million in 2026. Fred and Donald Trump became involved in the project. By the time Trump graduated from college in 1968, he was receiving the 2019 equivalent of $1,000,000 a year in untaxed gifts from his father. At age 23, he made an unsuccessful commercial foray into show business, investing $70,000 to become co-producer of the 1970 Broadway comedy Paris Is Out!
He was made the president of the company in 1971 and began using "The Trump Organization" as an umbrella brand. In that year, at the age of 25, he also moved to Manhattan, where he took part in larger construction projects and used glitzy architectural design to foster media attention.How Donald Trump transformed New York without any regard for design quality In 1973, the Justice Department alleged that the Trump Organization discriminated against prospective black tenants, rather than just screening out low-income applicants as they said. The Department of Justice said that black "testers" were sent to more than half a dozen buildings and were denied apartments, but a similar white tester would then be offered an apartment in the same building. Ultimately the Trumps' company and federal officials signed an agreement under which the Trumps made no admission of wrongdoing, and under which qualified minority applicants would be presented by the Urban League.
By 1973, Trump as president of the Trump Organization oversaw 14,000 apartments across Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. In 1978, the city selected his site on the West Side of Manhattan as the location for its Jacob Javits Convention Center, after finding that he was the only bidder who had a site ready for the project. He received a broker's fee on the property sale.
Trump's first major deal in Manhattan was the development of the Grand Hyatt Hotel in 1978 next to Grand Central Terminal. The aging brick facade of the Commodore Hotel was sheathed in glass, and the existing lobby of the hotel was replaced by an atrium. The Commodore was thus presented as a remodeled Hyatt hotel at its opening in September 1980, helping to bring Trump to public prominence. Part of this deal was a $1 million loan Fred Trump's Village Construction Corp. made to help repay draws on a Chase Manhattan credit line Fred had arranged for Donald as he built the hotel, as well as a $70 million construction loan jointly guaranteed by Fred and the Hyatt hotel chain. Fred was a silent partner in the initiative, due to his reputation having been damaged in New York real estate circles, after investigations into windfall profits and other abuses in his real estate projects, making Donald the frontman in the deal. According to journalist Wayne Barrett, Fred's two-decade friendship with a top Equitable officer, Ben Holloway, helped convince them to agree to the project. Donald negotiated a 40-year tax abatement for the hotel with the city, in exchange for a share of the venture's profits. The deal helped reduce the risk of the project and provided an incentive for investors to participate.
In 1981, Trump purchased and renovated a building that would become the Trump Plaza, on Third Avenue in New York City. Trump made this into an apartment cooperative, in which tenants partly owned the building.
Trump Tower
In 1983, Trump completed development of Trump Tower, a 58-story skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan. The project involved complicated negotiations with different parties for the Bonwit Teller building, the land, and the airspace above a neighboring building. When negotiations were completed in 1978, The New York Times wrote "That Mr. Trump was able to obtain the location ... is testimony to [his] persistence and to his skills as a negotiator."
Trump Tower occupies the former site of the architecturally significant Bonwit Teller flagship store, which Trump demolished in 1980 after purchasing the site. There was public outrage when valuable Art Deco bas-relief sculptures on its facade, which had been promised to the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Trump, were destroyed on the orders of the Trump Organization during the demolition process. In addition, the demolition of the Bonwit Teller store was criticized for a contractor's use of some 200 illegal Polish immigrant workers, who, during the rushed demolition process, were reportedly paid 4–5 dollars per hour for work in 12-hour shifts. Trump testified in 1990 that he rarely visited the site and was unaware of the illegal workers, some of whom lived at the site and who were known as the "Polish Brigade". A judge ruled in 1991 that the builders engaged in "a conspiracy to deprive the funds of their rightful contribution", referring to the pension and welfare funds of the labor unions. However, on appeal, parts of that ruling were overturned, and the record became sealed when the long-running labor lawsuit was settled in 1999, after 16 years in court.
Trump Tower was developed by Trump and the Equitable Life Assurance Company, and was designed by architect Der Scutt of Swanke Hayden Connell. Trump Tower houses both the primary penthouse condominium residence of Donald Trump and the headquarters of the Trump Organization. The building includes shops, cafés, offices, and residences. Its five-level atrium features a 60-foot-high waterfall spanned by a suspended walkway, below a skylight. Trump Tower was the setting of the NBC television show The Apprentice including a fully functional television studio set. When the building was completed, its condominiums sold quickly and the tower became a tourist attraction.
Expansion Harrah's at Trump Plaza opened in Atlantic City in 1984. The hotel/casino was built by Trump with financing by Holiday Corp. and operated by the Harrah's gambling unit of Holiday Corp. The casino's poor results exacerbated disagreements between Trump and Holiday Corp. Trump also acquired a partially completed building in Atlantic City from the Hilton Corporation for $320 million. When completed in 1985, the hotel/casino became Trump Castle. Trump's wife, Ivana, managed the property.
Trump acquired the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, in 1985 for $5 million, plus $3 million for the home's furnishings. In addition to using the home as a winter retreat, Trump also turned it into a private club with membership fees of $150,000. At about the same time, he acquired a condominium complex in West Palm Beach with Lee Iacocca that became Trump Plaza of the Palm Beaches.
In 1980, repairs began on Central Park's Wollman Rink, with an anticipated two-and-a-half year construction time frame. Because of flaws in the design and numerous problems during construction, the project remained unfinished by May 1986 and was estimated to require another 18 months and $2 million to $3 million to complete. Trump was awarded a contract as the general contractor in June 1986 to finish the repairs by December 15 with a cost ceiling of $3 million, with the actual costs to be reimbursed by the city. Trump hired an architect, a construction company, and a Canadian ice-rink manufacturer and completed the work in four months, $775,000 under budget. He operated the rink for a year and gave some of the profits to charity and public works projects in exchange for the rink's concession rights. Trump managed the rink from 1987 to 1995. He received another contract in 2001 which was extended until 2021. According to journalist Joyce Purnick, Trump's "Wollman success was also the stuff of a carefully crafted, self-promotional legend." While the work was in progress, Trump called numerous press conferences, for example for the completion of the laying of the pipes and the pouring of the cement. In 1987, he also unsuccessfully tried to get the city to rename the landmark after him; the Trump logo is prominently displayed on the railing encircling the rink, on the Zamboni, on the rental skates, and on the rink's website.
Trump unveiled a plan to construct a miniature city within New York City on the "largest available undeveloped tract" of land on the island of Manhattan on November 30, 1984. The Television City proposal, later called Trump City, would consist of "nearly 8,000 apartments and condominiums for up to 20,000 people, almost 10,000 parking spots, some 3.6 million square feet of television and movie studio space, and some 2 million square feet of 'prestigious' stores." To stand above all other buildings would have been an uncommonly tall skyscraper for the time, to be twice the height of the 76-story buildings beneath it. An organization of celebrities called Westpride, consisting of such individuals as Jerry Seinfeld, Christopher Reeve, and others, was formed and fundraised in opposition to the proposal. Mayor Ed Koch denied Trump tax breaks to help him develop his proposal, instead giving them to NBC to thwart the possibility of them relocating from Rockefeller Center to Trump's concept.
Trump acquired the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan in 1988. He paid $400 million for the property and once again tapped Ivana to manage its operation and renovation.