President Trump is the master of spotting hidden value, whether in a piece of property or a nation’s sometimes hidden strengths. We see it in one of his brilliant past real estate deals and in his current approach to trade negotiations.

The ability to spot hidden value is necessary for successful real estate developers, who determine their fortunes by imagining the future value that might emerge from a particular piece of land if transformed by constructing new facilities.

For example, Trump famously looked at the dilapidated Commodore Hotel adjacent to Manhattan’s Grand Central Station and saw enormous future value in it. The vision he eventually realized included fully refurbishing the rooms, spectacularly transforming the spacious lobby into a plant-filled atrium, and perhaps most importantly, installing a reflective glass façade over the building’s ancient brick exterior, making it look like a brand new, glossy hostelry.

It wasn’t just Trump’s construction vision that worked so well, but also his negotiation skills. Leveraging fears that the area around Grand Central was deteriorating, he negotiated an unprecedented 40-year tax abatement from New York City. He also entered into a joint venture with Hyatt that allowed him to obtain a $70 million mortgage for refurbishment.

In 1979, the total cost of purchasing and reconstructing the old hotel was $120 million. As Trump later wrote in The Art of the Deal, the hotel “was a hit from the first day. Gross operating profits now exceed $30 million a year.” In 1996, Trump sold his half interest in the hotel to Hyatt for $142 million. His $25 million equity investment yielded a 568% return, according to the publicly available figures. Such are the returns of successfully spotting and exploiting hidden value.

Trump saw behind the status quo and realized the vast potential hidden in the old hotel.

As president, Donald Trump’s ability to see value others have missed has flourished, not in the realm of real estate but in national power. For the last half-century, the United States has run trade deficits to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars—$773 billion in 2023 alone. While nobody, least of all President Trump, sees this as a good thing, only Trump has had the ability to leverage a massive trade deficit into an instrument of power.

As a master of deal-making, President Trump could see that our trade deficit liability is an extremely valuable asset to those countries on the trade surplus side of the equation. Receiving consumer dollars from Americans is an asset that they desperately want to protect—and President Trump can diminish that asset through tariffs and other import restrictions.

That’s why Trump has threatened tariffs against various nations, ranging from geopolitical enemies like China to rivals like the EU and friends like Canada. In Trump’s hands, the threat of tariffs is an instrument of national advancement, affecting not just trade issues but drug policy, illegal immigration, and even national defense.

I find it interesting that the new “First Buddy,” Elon Musk, is also a visionary who can see possibilities others miss and realize hidden potential by executing plans built on that vision. Both men have created value that adds to their personal fortunes but that also enriches the nation.

We live in a time of visionaries bent on a better future. Some fear it, as has always been the case with visionaries. But as President Trump is fond of saying, “We’ll see what happens.”

Image by Jhw57 (edited). CC BY-SA 4.0.