U.S. President Donald Trump writes his signature, as he signs executive orders and proclamations in the Oval Office at the White House, on April 9, 2025.Nathan Howard/Reuters
U.S. chief justice John Marshall is remembered for his 1819 Supreme Court opinion in which he said, “The power to tax is the power to destroy.” Economist Milton Friedman is remembered for saying that “the power to do good is also the power to do harm.” Donald Trump may be remembered for proving that the power to place his name on places and things is the power to, er, display power.
Thus the great rebranding of the United States.
Or at least the branding of several elements of its capital, its national cultural centre, its national park pass, its battleship fleet, its online prescription drug site, its Institute for Peace, its Labor Department, with its large banner featuring Mr. Trump’s face, and now its paper currency.
No president has ever placed his signature on a dollar bill, but then no other president has broken precedents with the ardour, frequency and significance of Mr. Trump. For 112 years − since Woodrow Wilson was in the White House and Robert Borden was Canada’s prime minister − American bills have borne the signature of the treasury secretary and the U.S. treasurer.
No more. Coming to an American ice-cream stand some time this summer: a US$5 note bearing the signature of Mr. Trump. It is fitting that the news was broken by a publication called Vanity Fair.
Trump’s signature will be on all new U.S. paper currency, Treasury announces
The decision came with familiar expressions of praise for the President. “There is no more powerful way to recognize the historic achievements of our great country and President Donald J. Trump than U.S. dollar bills bearing his name,” said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, whose signature will also be on the new currency.
Though the country may have grown weary of executive eponymity, the latest example of Trump branding has prompted skepticism, even outrage.
“George Washington wouldn’t have done this,” said Jeffrey Engel, the director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University. “Monarchs and emperors do this to suggest they’re the embodiment of the country. We’re a republic, where the office is more important than the person holding it. A North Korean leader would envy the big picture of him on a government building.”
At least as recounted in the Bible, the act of naming expresses power. In the Book of Genesis, God “formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air, and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them; and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.”
Minnesota holds flagship ‘No Kings’ protest against Trump
The use of presidential “names, images and likenesses” − to adapt a phrase employed by U.S. college athletes who have relinquished their amateur status and are now being paid − is not unprecedented, though never in the manner in which Mr. Trump has.
Ronald Reagan used to joke that the term “Reaganomics” was a slur − until it produced results. The comprehensive health care overhaul passed by Barack Obama swiftly became known as “Obamacare” − a term of tribute when employed by its supporters, one of opprobrium when hurled by its opponents.
No one would have begrudged calling the COVID-19 vaccine the “Trump Shot,” but the President, who spurred its development, scorned being identified with it because many members of his MAGA movement considered it a dangerous response to a pandemic they believed was badly handled by elite members of the political and medical establishment.
Opponents of the War of 1812 described the conflict as “Mr. Madison’s War,” an implicit criticism of president James Madison. The severe economic downturn that occurred during the presidency of Grover Cleveland became known as the “Cleveland Panic.” The shantytowns that sprung up during the economic distress of the Great Depression were called “Hoovervilles,” a disparaging reference to president Herbert Hoover.
Mr. Trump, who in his business career put his name on hotels, resorts, casinos, golf clubs, steaks, ties and a non-accredited seminar series he called a “university,” hasn’t hesitated to apply it to government institutions and functions. America’s new series of battleships will be known as the “Trump Class.”
Though there are “Ford Class” aircraft carriers, named for former president Gerald Ford − one of them just departed the Middle East − and several individual naval vessels bear presidential names (George Washington, Jimmy Carter and, soon, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush), large “classes” of battleships generally are named for states (Illinois, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Wyoming). It is appropriate that the first vessel of the Trump Class will bear the name Defiant.
Mr. Trump’s signature was placed on the pandemic-era stimulus cheques distributed during his first administration. The use of his name or image has mounted in the second Trump presidency, most visibly in the signage that describes the national cultural centre on the Potomac River as the Donald J. Trump/John F. Kennedy Center, a change that Congress, which applied the Kennedy name to the performing arts hub after the 35th president was assassinated, has not approved.
Other Trump branding appears on the new savings and investment instruments for children (“Trump Accounts”) and a 24-karat gold commemorative coin (the President on one side, an American eagle on the other) approved this month by the Trump appointees on the Commission of Fine Arts. There remain proposals for a dollar coin bearing Mr. Trump’s face and to place his name on the suburban Washington airport now named for Eisenhower-era secretary of state John Foster Dulles.
Opinion: Trump’s Iran war is going to end badly, unless it ends worse
The other airport in the Washington area, once known as National Airport, now is named for Mr. Reagan, which is ironic because as president he fired more than 1,000 air-traffic controllers. Canadian prime ministers’ names are on airports in Montreal (Pierre Trudeau), Toronto (Lester Pearson), Saskatoon (John Diefenbaker) and Ottawa (John A. Macdonald), along with fellow Father of Confederation George-Étienne Cartier.
In recent years there’s been a backlash against American state governors placing their names on highway welcome signs. Governor Pat Quinn of Illinois signed legislation banning governors’ names on taxpayer-paid signs in his state.
The proliferation of Trump branding has several ironies.
The Federal Highway Administration ruled that Rhode Island Democratic governor Gina Raimondo’s name on road signs was “not in compliance” with federal highway regulations. That was issued by the Trump administration.
And this: Mr. Trump perhaps didn’t consider that cash now accounts for a mere 14 per cent of U.S. consumer payments. He did, however, pioneer the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. It does not yet bear his name.