Trump: How to Get Rich

Be Strategically Dramatic

In 1999, I began construction on the tallest residential tower in the world, Trump World Tower at the United Nations Plaza.

The location was terrific—the East Side of Manhattan, close to the United Nations, with both river views and city views. It was hot stuff, but not everyone was happy about it, especially some diplomats at the United Nations, who didn’t want their thirty-eight-story building to be outclassed by our ninety-story tower. According to CNN, UN secretary general Kofi Annan acknowledged talking with New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani about the project and how to stop it.

It will not fit here, the Ukrainian ambassador, Volodymyr Yel’chenko, told CNN, because it overshadows the United Nations complex.

When the protests became vocal, I used my own brand of diplomacy and refused to say anything critical of the United Nations. I predicted that many ambassadors and UN officials would end up buying apartments in the building. Sure enough, they have.

But as soon as we were in business, the city hit us with an enormous tax assessment, costing us over $100 million more than we thought we should pay. We decided to take the only action possible. We sued the city for $500 million.

For four years, we fought this case. The city lawyers held their ground, and we held ours. We could have given up. It’s not easy to take on the government and win, especially when the issue is taxes, but I knew we had a case.

Finally, after many conversations, we reached a settlement. The city agreed to cut our taxes seventeen percent and give us the ten-year tax abatement that we sought if we would agree to withdraw our lawsuit and subsidize two hundred units of affordable housing in the Bronx.

The lawsuit saved us approximately $97 million. We never would have gotten any of it if we hadn’t taken dramatic action.