[In This Economy] Marcos, Trump, and 40 Wall Street

US president-elect Donald Trump’s comeback to the White House next year means different things for different people. In a recent piece, I offered guesses on what it might mean for the Philippine economy.

On November 19, it was reported that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. congratulated Trump via phone. Trump allegedly asked about his friend Imelda, the President’s mother.

Said Marcos Jr. in Filipino, “Of course, he remembers the Philippines. It’s my mother whom he’s friends with. He really knows her. He asked about her, ‘How’s Imelda?’ How is she…so, I said, she sends her regards.”

But what most media outlets missed when they reported this is that the Marcoses and Trump are closer than they look. (READ: Bakit magkakilala si Trump at mga Marcos?)

Online, there’s a photo of Imelda seated right beside Trump in New York, at a 1990 party of comedian and radio host Joey Adams. But their friendly ties go well beyond social calls.

New York properties

You see, in the 1980s, at the height of the Marcos dictatorship, the Marcoses bought many properties in New York left and right, as part of their robbery of Filipinos’ money.

The properties they bought included 40 Wall Street, a 70-story skyscraper which is now known as the Trump Building.

Completed in May 1930, 40 Wall Street was, in fact, the world’s tallest building for some time, from November 1929 to May 1930. The building changed ownership many times since then, and in 1982, just as the Philippines was tumbling into its worst post-war debt and economic crisis, the Marcoses came to buy the leasehold of 40 Wall Street using millions of US dollars’ worth of Filipinos’ money.

The Marcoses’ agents were the brothers Joseph and Ralph Bernstein, real estate developers. Gliceria “Glecy” Tantoco, one of the founders of Rustan’s and one of Imelda’s loyal “Blue Ladies,” helped in the Marcoses’ purchase of New York properties.

The first building they bought was Crown Tower, another skyscraper located at New York’s Fifth Avenue. According to a report by the Chicago Tribune, Tantoco requested that the Bernsteins set up a shell corporation in the Netherlands Antilles, and the money coursed through that shell corporation was used to buy Crown Tower in 1981.

At that time the Bernsteins did not know who the real owner was. But in November 1981, Tantoco arranged for the Bernsteins to meet Imelda at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Imelda was then revealed as the “principal” or real owner of Crown Tower.

Shell companies were used by the Marcoses to buy three other New York buildings, including Herald Center, 200 Madison, and 40 Wall Street.

The deal for 40 Wall Street was settled around Christmas of 1982: “About midnight, [Joseph Bernstein] said, he and his brother piled into a limousine with Mrs. Marcos and Tantoco and drove to Wall Street. He said Mrs. Marcos stood on a plaza across from 40 Wall St. and stared up at the building for 10 or 15 minutes before she said, ‘I’m kind of proud of it.’”

In a testimony, the Bernsteins also recalled that in one of Imelda’s dinner parties, she would brandish at guests a statement from a Swiss bank, and the statement would appear to indicate $120 million.

Trump Tower

Right after the 1986 EDSA People Power Revolution, in March 1986, the Marcoses’ assets in the US were frozen by a New York State Supreme Court judge, as the Cory Aquino administration promptly filed a case in their effort to recover the Marcoses’ ill-gotten wealth.

In November 1989, a federal judge ordered the sale of 40 Wall Street, and the proceeds were to go to an escrow fund. The leasehold of 40 Wall Street was auctioned off and bought by a certain Burton Resnick for $77 million.

Fast-forward to 1995, Trump obtained the leasehold of 40 Wall Street and later spent millions of dollars to refurbish the aging building. Apparently, Trump loves this building: he said to the Financial Times before, “It’s one of my favorite deals, and one of my favorite buildings…I had been watching this building for decades before I made my move in 1995.”

To this day, Trump holds the leasehold for 40 Wall Street, and there’s talk of it being seized in relation to a civil fraud case that the Trump Organization lost in 2024.

Ruben Carranza, a former commissioner of the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) tasked to go after the Marcoses’ ill-gotten wealth, made a video with Rappler where he toured the New York buildings bought by the Marcoses during the dictatorship. Last week I had the students in my Martial Law Economics class at UPSE watch that video.

Apart from the four New York buildings, Imelda also bought at least five condo units at the Olympic Towers which were near the luxury stores she would frequent. All of it was bought using Filipinos’ money, and meant to feed Imelda’s excesses.

The fact that Imelda would befriend, cavort and deal with a person as shady as Donald Trump should be no surprise. They share not just a passion for real estate, but luxury and wealth in general — even though obtained through shady means.

Extra friendly

During the congratulatory call, Marcos Jr. said he “expressed to [Trump] our continuing desire to strengthen that relationship between our two countries, which is a relationship that is as deep as can possibly be because it has been for a very long time.”

Marcos also proudly exclaimed that he “reminded the president-elect that Filipinos in America overwhelmingly voted for Trump” — as though that’s something that automatically reflects well on us.

Quite possibly, though, the Marcoses’ friendliness to US authorities goes well beyond the desire to deepen our countries’ ties.

Remember that the Marcoses still have assets and interests in the US. Remaining friendly allows their family a good chance to keep hold of their remaining ill-gotten wealth in the US.

Don’t forget, too, that until Marcos Jr. took office in 2022, the Marcoses could not even set foot on US soil. Marites Dañguilan-Vitug, Rappler editor at large, wrote that this is because of arrest warrants allegedly waiting for them there, for “[failing] to comply with the decisions of a Hawaii court’s rulings on how the family’s seized assets should have been disbursed to the victims of human rights violations.”

After that, the Marcoses (specifically Imelda, Bongbong, and Imee) were “slapped…with another $353.6 million fine in contempt of court.” This is supposed to be the “largest award for a contempt case ever on record” in the US.

No wonder Marcos Jr. is more than eager to befriend and please Trump. – Rappler.com

JC Punongbayan, PhD is an assistant professor at the UP School of Economics and the author of False Nostalgia: The Marcos “Golden Age” Myths and How to Debunk Them. In 2024, he received The Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) Award for economics. Follow him on Instagram (@jcpunongbayan) and Usapang Econ Podcast.