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“We are in love with the building,” Trump gushed. “We are very, very happy with what happened regarding this building and how quickly we built it.”
He and his family hoped that Trump International Hotel & Tower would cement their company’s reputation as one of the world’s leading luxury real estate developers.
Instead, the skyscraper became another disappointment in a portfolio full of them. Construction was delayed. The condos proved difficult to sell. The commercial space was empty.
Yet for Trump and his company, the Chicago experience also turned out to be something else: the latest example of its ability to force major financial institutions and exploit the tax code to cushion the blow of its repeated business failures.
The president’s federal income tax records, obtained by The New York Times, show for the first time that, since 2010, his lenders forgave him about $ 287 million in debt that he was unable to pay. The vast majority were related to the Chicago project.
