The sums stated are almost irrelevant.
Whether it's $ 200,000,000 or $ 400,000,000 or $ 600,000,000 or $ 1,000,000,000, that's a lot of money to invest in a project.
So the question remains, irrespective of whether Trump invested $ 1,000,000 or $ 1,000,000,000, he's looking for that investment to be profitable, to have it generate a satisfactory return on his investment, and if it's profitable for him, that means it's a successful enterprise, which means that it's successful for the economy.
I think this is what a lot of people in Aberdeen initially thought, but not sure I can agree with that, and I think many locals have changed their views. The numbers that the Trump Organisation throw around may well be out by gigantic proportions. Lets keep things in perspective. He has built a golf course, at this point nothing more.
1) just yesterday, a member of the Trump organization told the Guardian they had already spent 160 million dollars - that's on a single golf course, on links land, no clubhouse. I wonder how close the members of this site, who know how much a course costs to build, think this is to reality.
2) At a press conference, when confronted with the fact that the contractor building the course was Irish, using workers flown in and out again, Donald Trump said
"hundreds" of local people had been employed planting marram grass, and that was a "big job" . A freedom of information request by the Herald newspaper in Glasgow found that
a dozen unskilled labourers had been hired for a few weeks to plant grass (this was in the police files since they were concerned about security).
3) A senior pro-development economist at the London School of Economics looked at the jobs created projections and said they were fantastical - Aberdeen has one of the lowest unemployment rates in Europe and most of the low-paid workers would come from outside the country. He said the real number would be "closer to zero" than the number the Trump Organisation projected.
THe project is in fact, massively subsidized by the government, to the tune of millions upon millions of dollars, since the government has given Trump planning permission in an area of natural beauty where no planning permission of this kind was ever supposed to be given. With that planning permission, the potential value of the property (and profits for Trump) has risen tremendously even if he never put a spade in the ground . (remember much of the development is for luxury housing for rich Scots which could be built elsewhere by local developers if there is demand). The loss to the Scottish people of a piece of vitally untouched natural coastline, of importance to science as one of the last of its kind, is permanent and less easy to quantity.. But I forget, Mr Trump also says he has "great support from environmental groups" a statement so contrary to actual fact that it simply beggars belief. It's not hard to make the argument that the economic benefit to the area would have been much great in the medium to long term if Mr Trump had never set foot on the property.
And yes, the culprit here is also the Scottish government, which aspires for independence, and they should be held accountable for it.
BTW, Anthony Baxter, the director of You've Been Trumped is on the Rosie O'donnell Show tonight at 7pm (6 pm Central) on the OWN network, and they will be showing some clips from the film.