Trump: The Art of the Deal

Trump: The Art of the Deal is a 1987 memoir and business advice book by Donald J. Trump, co-written with journalist Tony Schwartz. The book provides insights into Trump’s business practices, personal experiences, and the strategies he employed to achieve success in the real estate industry. It combines autobiographical anecdotes with practical guidance on negotiation and deal-making. 

This guide is based on the 2015 Ballantine Books edition of The Art of the Deal.

Summary

The Art of the Deal provides an insight into the world of business and real estate development in 1980s New York City from the perspective of Donald Trump. In Chapter 1, Trump asserts that deals are his “art form” (1), and he invites the audience to experience a typical week in his life. He gives a day-to-day breakdown of his week, though he prefers to operate in an unstructured manner. He spends his first day making telephone calls, chasing opportunities, taking meetings, and visiting the sites of his various projects, as well as helping his wife, Ivana, choose a school for their children. Over the course of the week, he deals with Holiday Inns and contemplates buying the entire company. He references his business partners, including his brother, Robert. His business empire is based in New York, but he has interests in New Jersey, Las Vegas, and Moscow, Russia.

In Chapter 2, Trump outlines what he believes to be the core elements of any deal. He has a particular style of deal making, which he believes derives from his instincts and genetics. He encourages people to think big and to protect the downside in any deal. Drawing on examples from his own deals, he advocates for following instincts, using leverage, and understanding public demand. He believes in the importance of location in real estate, but locations can also be enhanced through clever marketing. Publicity and press are key to his business approach, but he reminds his readers that they must follow through on their promises to maintain credibility. For Donald Trump, money is not necessarily important. It is a way to “keep score” (63) while conducting business.

In Chapter 3, Trump delves into his family history. His father was a real estate developer named Fred Trump. Unlike Donald, Fred worked largely in low- to middle-income housing projects. Preferring to work at the top end of the market, Donald took what he learned from working with his father and dedicated himself to building expensive developments in New York. Over the ensuing chapters, Trump outlines the way in which he found his niche in New York real estate. He worked out of a small apartment in Manhattan but networked at exclusive clubs, meeting important people and establishing relationships that would help him later in life.

One of these important people was Victor Palmieri, who oversaw Penn Central Railroad’s bankruptcy assets. Palmieri told Trump that several hotels were for sale, and Trump began developing the Commodore Hotel beside Grand Central Terminal. Trump describes the complex process of putting together his first big deal. At times, he bent the truth to ensure that all the financing and regulatory oversight aligned. He petitioned the city for tax breaks and defied critics by modernizing instead of refurbishing the hotel. Trump believes that people eventually came to appreciate his vision.

In Chapter 7, Trump describes his work on the Bonwit Teller building. Through a complex process of negotiating over air rights with Tiffany & Co and adjacent property rights, Trump began building Trump Tower. Trump Tower became one of the most prestigious luxury residences in New York City, fueled by press and rumors, often encouraged by Trump himself.

In Chapter 8, Trump describes his move into the casino business in Atlantic City. Casinos, he learned, make more money than hotels. Even a badly run casino can make vast sums, so Trump believed that he could make money with his business insights. Obtaining the right site and licenses was difficult; Trump compares his successes with the failures of others. He partnered with Holiday Inn to open his casino. In Chapter 9, Trump delves deeper into his experiences of running casinos in Atlantic City. Eventually, Trump Castle opened in 1985, and Trump credits his wife, Ivana, with running the business so well.

Trump does not always succeed. In Chapter 10, he explains the difficulty he found in developing a rent-controlled building. Since the tenants were locked into low rents, they were incentivized to oppose his efforts. A long and protracted legal battle damaged Trump’s publicity. Ultimately, Trump explains how the tenants won a minor victory, but he also benefited by finding a different way to make money from the project. In Chapter 11, Trump describes his struggles to set up a rival football league to the NFL. The USFL, he explains, had potential to compete with the NFL, but the league was badly run. Trump entered as the owner of the New Jersey Devils and tried to institute changes, but other owners were not as ambitious or wealthy as Trump. As such, the league struggled to establish itself. The USFL won an antitrust case against the NFL, but the court only awarded a token $1 in damages—a settlement that made the league a losing prospect. Trump insists that he still has big plans for the sporting world, even if he failed with the USFL.

Chapter 12 focuses on one of Trump’s lower-scale projects. He describes how he monitored the renovation of the Wollman Skating Rink in New York City—a project meant to take only a few months that was delayed by years. The project was massively overbudget. Trump blames the failures of this government-led project on bureaucracy and the failings of public services. He offered to take on the project himself, delivering it under budget and ahead of schedule at no real cost to the city. Though his initial proposal was sarcastically rejected by the Mayor of New York City, Ed Koch, a public campaign emerged in support of Trump. Eventually, Trump was placed in charge of the redevelopment. He hired skilled workers and ensured that the people of New York had access to a skating rink. Trump describes his personal pride in the project, which allowed him to give back to his community while also embarrassing his old enemy, Ed Koch.

In Chapter 13, Trump describes his work on the West Side Yards in 1985. He planned to redevelop this piece of prime real estate by luring a television company to the site. He named the project Television City, hoping that the television network NBC—which was then contemplating a relocation—would move into the site and remain in New York. Trump also wanted to build the world’s tallest building on the site. He describes the process of choosing an architect and negotiating with the city’s administrators to choose plans with mass appeal. He struggled to reach a compromise with Ed Koch, and he blames Koch for his failure to land a tax deal that would benefit NBC. Trump is certain that, in the future, he will succeed in developing the site as he imagined. In the final chapter, Trump returns to the deals described in Chapter 1. He gives a rundown of how each deal turned out, with many benefiting him in unexpected and profitable ways.