Trump toilets: Improperly squatting
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Not the throne he had in mind
Feb 18th 2017
CHINA has a history of hilariously inappropriate export brand-names, including Front Gate men’s underwear, Long March luggage and, guaranteed to raise a laugh, Great Leap Forward floor polish. But it has also stumbled on a brand that should surely open up vast business opportunities, at least among Democratic-voting households in America: Trump brand toilets (see picture).
The name has nothing to do with the 45th president. Shenzhen Trump Industries was founded in 2002. Its Chinese name, Chuang Pu, means “innovate everywhere”. It sounds similar to a name often used for Donald Trump: Chuan Pu. The firm makes toilets for “high-end spas, hotels [and] public institutions”, and uses the world’s first “continuous rewinding toilet sanitary cover device”. Its boss says that Trump toilets are used 100m times a year in China.
This great Chinese success story is now under threat. It is one of many Chinese products unrelated to the American president that use the word Trump. In 2006 Mr Trump applied in China for ownership of it as a trademark in construction services. Alan Garten, the chief legal officer of his company, the Trump Organisation, told the Washington Post that “someone was improperly squatting on” his firm’s rights. This week, after years of dispute, and, by amazing coincidence, just after Mr Trump promised to honour the “one-China policy” (see article), a Chinese court agreed that in the construction business, Trump belongs to the Trump Organisation. The legal implications for Trump toilets are not known.
