Donald Trump inadvertently doomed his multimillion-dollar renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool with his sweeping tariff plans, according to a report.
Rodney Jarboe, president of paint and coating manufacturer Creative Polymers, revealed to The New York Times how he had been approached by David Schutzenhofer, manager of the president’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, for advice on how to reline the pool for the America250 celebrations.
Schutzenhofer, who works in hospitality and has no training in engineering or architecture, then came up with a novel idea to coat the pool’s concrete slabs with a polyurea liner to fix the long-standing issue of it leaking millions of gallons of water every year.
However, Trump’s tariff plans targeting resins—the raw or semi-solid form of a polymer—from China severely limited the amount of available polyurea coatings. “Tariffs were reducing the amount of materials that could come into the U.S. to make this stuff,” Jarboe told the Times.
Instead, Jarboe’s Creative Polymers approached the California-based company Rhino Linings to produce enough polyurea coating at its factory in Texas to cover the 2,000-foot-long pool. Rhino was seen as a good fit because it made a coating in a shade called “American flag blue,” which they correctly assumed would delight Trump.
Rhino then teamed up with Atlantic Industrial Coatings, a Virginia-based company that had never won a government contract, for help applying the coating.
As noted by the Times, the chain of events starting with the president announcing major levies on imports from China resulted in a company with no previous federal contracts being awarded millions to fix a problem at a high-profile national landmark, following a brainwave by someone who runs one of Trump’s golf resorts.
“It’s like asking the museum guard to restore a painting in the Met,” Charles Birnbaum, the president of the Cultural Landscape Foundation, who tried to prevent the Reflecting Pool renovation, told the Times.
Elsewhere, Jarboe said that Schutzenhofer had only contacted him in March about the idea of renovating the soon-to-be algae-infested pool to coincide with the July 4 celebrations.
“For this thing to be done in the time frame that was required, we almost had to have a contract and start manufacturing by the first week of April,” Jarboe said. “So it was a very tight deadline to make a decision.”
The rushed nature of the renovation was the cause of another embarrassment for Trump surrounding the pool.
Last month, the office of Trump’s handpicked U.S. attorney, Jeanine Pirro, announced it would drop charges against former Olympian David Hearn, who had been accused of sabotaging the pool liner.
Pirro’s office confirmed that the damage at the pool had nothing to do with vandalism and was instead the result of the “rush to complete” the renovation project ahead of celebrations marking the country’s 250th anniversary.
The Times also noted that the project’s late start resulted in some “bureaucratic jujitsu” from the Interior Department, which cited the tight deadline to fight off scrutiny of the project and accuse those raising questions about it of causing unnecessary delays.
The department, led by top Trump ally Doug Burgum, is still pushing the false claim that the pool was damaged because it was targeted by vandals. “President Donald J. Trump is an expert builder who fixed the Reflecting Pool permanently before deranged people vandalized it,” Katie Martin, a department spokesperson, told the Times.
White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers added: “For years, the Reflecting Pool sat neglected, plagued with algae and leaking millions of gallons of water. Fixing it was common sense. It’s another example of President Trump restoring our nation’s capital for the American people.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House and the Interior Department for further comment.
