Trump casinos lost more jobs than any other casino in Atlantic City
A study conducted by law professor Jonathan Lipson, from Temple University, found that Trump casinos lost jobs at a greater rate than any other casino in Atlantic City.
US.- A study conducted by Temple University law professor Jonathan Lipson ranked Trump-branded casinos “the worst” among their rivals when it came to jobs over a 14-year period. Professor Lipson, a bankruptcy scholar, found that Trump casinos shed some 7,400 jobs between 1997 and 2010. That works out, on average, to job losses per casino of 900, which means 37 percent higher than at other Atlantic City gambling venues in the same period.
The Republican presidential nominee’s campaign disputes the implication from the analysis that he was a bad casino operator, arguing there were other market forces at work. The campaign said in a statement to that the organisation faced additional challenges of having three Trump casinos competing in the same market, which “turned out to be a disadvantage” once times got tough.
According to a review of financial documents from Trump’s casino days by The Wall Street Journal, Trump personally netted at least US$135 million from his casinos, even as the entities he operated repeatedly sought bankruptcy protection from creditors. That amount comprises both the publicly available cash investments Trump made in the casinos and the money he took out, which included dividends, bond distributions, management fees and other sets of funds included in various casinos regulatory and other financial documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
“I made a lot of money in Atlantic City,” said Trump in an interview last year with The Wall Street Journal about his casino record. “The money I made fueled a lot of projects all over the world.”
However, in the period covered by Mr. Lipson’s study, Trump was chief executive of Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts Inc. until 2005, when the company emerged from bankruptcy protection and his equity stake was cut to around 25 percent, though he remained chairman. Trump casinos lost jobs steadily over the whole period, and mostly at a faster pace than any of their rivals. Furthermore, Trump’s three casinos filed individually for bankruptcy protection in the early 90s. Those were then consolidated into one company. The casinos he had controlled filed for bankruptcy three more times, in 2004, 2009 and 2014.
Critics, including the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, believe that what happened to Trump’s gambling empire should get a good look from those counting on him to add jobs to the economy. The GOP candidate has defended his bankruptcy filings as “an effective and commonly used practice” that legally allows businesses to restructure “and ultimately save jobs,” but Professor Lipson found that the job cuts and revenue declines continued even after bankruptcy cut hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of debt.
