The Trump brand is unique in many ways. Where Obama was a unifier, Trump was a divider, where Michelle was a synergistic partner, Melania was a trophy wife on the sidelines, where Obama was predicted to win, Trump was the underdog who beat the odds, where Obama was thought to be a pacifist it was Trump who did not get involved in any new global conflict. However, in the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection Trump has been banned from social networks, impeached a historic second time, facing threats of facing criminal action, boycotted by corporate America. Is the end near for the Trump brand?
Before we can discuss that question let me dissect the Trump brand. In my opinion, there are two important components of the Trump brand, the Trump commercial brand and the Trump political brand. The commercial Trump brand is composed of Trump’s business ventures, such as hotels, golf courses, reality television series, commercial real estate, residential real estate, a bankrupt airline,  and a defunct university. The Trump political brand is epitomized by the acronym MAGA (Make America Great Again). His political brand values were America first, transactional foreign policy agreements, military commitments based upon fair compensation expectations, and so on.
Let’s first look at the Trump commercial brand. Any brand in essence is a market-based asset. It is a repository of goodwill that has accumulated over time and provides both the brand and customers with a series of tangible and intangible benefits. The Trump commercial brand has suffered some setbacks with some organizations refusing to do business with him anymore. Indeed, the PGA cancelling its tournament at his New Jersey golf club is a setback. But his hospitality business in recent times has been hit by the Covid-19 crisis more than by his own actions.
Likewise, his brand’s ability to acquire financing seems under threat, with Deutsche Bank seeming unlikely to extend a multimillion-dollar loan to him. For any good brand, the cost of capital via financing should be lower than a comparatively bad brand. In Trump’s case, although Deutsche bank may not be interested in extending his financing, a number of Middle Eastern states where he has good relations might influence their banks to finance him. After all, the Saudis did buy his yacht in his previous time of need, as was tweeted by Prince Waleed bin Talal.
Despite his troubles at home the Trump Organization is expanding overseas. In addition, there is a huge audience that believes he won the election. Therefore, the ban on his social media accounts has not gone down well with them. The Trump Organization is also reportedly considering a media venture. The very fact the Trump organization can still leverage his brand name overseas and announce innovative new ventures is a testament that the brand still is a valuable market-based asset.
However, this is not to say all is rosy with the Trump commercial brand. One major issue is that the Trump Brand substantially is invested in the hospitality industry. Take the example of the Trump International hotel in Washington D.C. It has an excellent location near the White House, but despite its location according to 0 it currently has a 57 percent occupancy rate as compared with the 75 percent of competitor hotels such as Four Seasons, the Ritz-Carlton and the Hay-Adams. However, the rate is still higher than the average Washington DC rate, of 30 percent for the last 11 months of 2020.
Despite what some media outlets are stating, Trump’s brand is not in imminent risk of sinking. Brand Trump still has promise and any underestimating it would do so at their own peril.
Brand Trump still has substantial commercial and political leverage that can be translated into an audience for a media enterprise. For instance, consider rightwing pundit Alex Jones who had revenue of $20 million in 2014 from media revenues and associated sales. In 2013 he made about 10 million mainly from advertising, subscriptions to his network and DVD and T-shirt sales. Alex Jones had 900,000 followers on Twitter which is way less than the 88 million Trump had. Some estimates say 35 percent of Republicans on Twitter followed Trump. Assuming that this corresponds to 35 percent of Trump’s 88 million Twitter followers then about 31 million Republicans followed him on Twitter. If he is able to generate even $12 dollars per Republican viewer ($1 a month) for his network, that translates into $372 million revenue. This isn’t bad if compared with NBC news’ $325 million dollars. It does dwarf Fox News’ $12 billion, but Trump Media can be a reasonable-sized player in the USA over time. Another factor is the democratization of finance with apps such as Robinhood that charge zero commission on trades. Trump has a readily available army of ideological supporters who would provide equity financing for any new media-related commercial venture.
Of course, not everything with the Trump name is bound to succeed as can be seen from the now defunct Ivanka Trump fashion label. Although the label did do well for a time, with her perfume sales temporarily performing well on Amazon, once retailers boycotted her brand in 2017, things started to look dismal. Furthermore, her later strategy of focusing on cost-conscious customers may have not been the best for her brand. But the silver lining is that the Trump commercial brand has value and can be extended to a number of industries, however, any brand name cannot save a brand from failure if it is not managed properly and hit by boycotts.
The second component of the Trump brand is the political brand. Trump still has the support of his voter base, as in 2016 he had about 63 million votes and in 2020 he had 74 million votes. In both elections he had about 46 percent of the popular vote. Trump’s popularity has not declined. Compare this with other one-term presidents. Jimmy Carter gained 50 percent of the popular vote when he won in 1976 compared with 41 percent in 1980 when he lost. Similarly, George Bush Senior won 53 percent of the popular vote in 1988 and about 37 percent when he lost in 1992. Historically, Trump seems to be unique in recent one-term presidents that his popularity actually increased in terms of votes received. Moreover, some of his supporters have become more militant as can be seen from the mob that attacked the US Capitol. Furthermore, there seems to be a lack of will to convict him within the GOP and he is still assumed to be controlling the party despite the fact he has left office. Trump still has an army of right-wing billionaires willing to aid his cause, notable amongst them the late Sheldon Adelson. Trump also has his benefactors amongst many Middle Eastern states and his pushing many of them to normalize relations with Israel shows his leverage with them.
But in terms of foreign policy, Trump was a maverick. He changed the equation with his European allies asking for equitable compensation for the US military presence in Europe. He pushed Iran to the brink, but backed down. He pushed stocks to an all-time high and so increased the value of the 401Ks of retired folks. He also increased the average hourly wage, although it is disputed to what degree he influenced this, as some sources claim the increasing trend was happening since 2014 under Obama.
A recent Washington Post analysis provides information about the Obama years versus the Trump years. I have limited the results of that analysis to three-year periods, ignoring 2009 (recession) for Obama and 2020 (pandemic) for Trump. Hence, I only evaluate the normal three years during their first terms. In terms of GDP growth Trump did slightly better, substantially better in terms of unemployment, better in improving the middle-class income, better in the overall stock market performance, better in manufacturing output, better in terms of improving US home prices, better in terms of managing public debt and so on. Not surprisingly, Trump had the lowest number of Americans uninsured for health during recent years. Overall, Trump did better than his predecessor during the normal three-year period. However, some argue that he inherited a better economy than Obama did and a lot of his achievements were caused by Obama’s policies of the previous eight years.
But any analysis of the Trump political brand would be incomplete without considering the political turmoil he is facing. Although social media websites trend, such as Twitter’s, may have you believe his ship is rapidly sinking, one should accept such trends with a grain of salt as there is evidence from PEW research to suggest that Democrats have a stronger presence on Twitter than Republicans do. But even if we accept Twitter as an unbiased social media source, websites such as the Hedonometer.org that tracks American happiness via tweets do not show much change in the happiness of Americans on the day the Capitol was stormed, compared tothe day Trump was inaugurated. The day Trump was inaugurated Americans scored a 5.88 in terms of happiness on Twitter on a scale of 1 to 9. On the day of the insurrection Americans scored a 5.73. Of course, happiness cannot be equated as an endorsement of Trump, but does give a general perception of US sentiments on Twitter. And the sentiment does not seem worse than when he was elected four years ago. Hence, despite what some media outlets are stating, Trump’s brand is not in imminent risk of sinking. Brand Trump still has promise and any underestimating it would do so at their own peril.
