The Republican candidate for U.S. president, whose campaign is based largely on the claim that he wins every deal, was a big loser last week when Swedish energy company Vattenfall said it would install 11 wind turbines within sight of a Scottish seacoast golf course that Donald J. Trump has been trying for seven years to turn into a resort.
Vattenfall said on Thursday that its US$397 million, 93-MW offshore wind installation would be ready to go online before the end of 2018.
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Trump, who acquired the golf course north of Aberdeen, Scotland, in 2009, has said he plans to develop it into a resort community with 1,450 year-round and seasonal homes and a 450-bed hotel. He opposed Vattenfall’s project before local planning authorities in 2011—denouncing it as a “monstrous” eyesore—and eventually pursued the matter all the way to the UK Supreme Court, which turned down his appeal last December.
“Trump took time out from campaigning Thursday,” The Atlantic’s CityLab blog reports, “to promise to escalate his objections further,” to the European court system.
“Showing an impressive degree of gall,” the outlet adds, “his lawyers’ current line of argument is that the technology in question is now dated thanks to the long delays to construction caused by none other than Trump himself.”
