What small-business owners should know about Donald Trump

“HE ALMOST bankrupted us,” says the retired owner of a construction business on the east coast. Thirty years ago he ran a small business, which was hired by Donald Trump to work on an 11-month project at his Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City. It was the biggest contract, by far, that the business had ever had. The builders worked as they had never done before to complete the job on time. As soon as they finished, Mr Trump stopped paying. He owed around $200,000 of the total bill of some $700,000, a huge sum for a small company.

What followed was a nearly year-long battle to extract the money they were owed. Lawyers advised the company that Mr Trump would procrastinate with expensive litigation, as he had done many times before. Other contractors related their experiences with the “Trump discount”, the billionaire’s habit of rarely paying the full sum he owed. As the “Trump discount” made the rounds in the industry, wily contractors quoted a higher price at the outset to avoid suffering any losses. Then, one day in 1988, the phone rang at 9.30am. A sweet-voiced “special assistant” of Mr Trump’s announced she had a cheque for the...Continue reading

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