Hell to pay

IN 2011 Donald Trump opted not to run for president (even though, naturally, he knew he would win) because he loved business and was having too much fun on television. Four years later, he launched his first presidential bid with a shameful tirade against Mexican immigrants, saying “they are bringing drugs, they are bringing crime, they’re rapists and some, I assume, are good people”. Unsurprisingly, on June 29ththis cost him his TV career at NBC and turned his Miss Universe business into a bedraggled mess. It looks likely, more generally, to hurt the Trump brand, on which he has just put a stonking $3.3 billion valuation (26 times the brand value Forbes, a business magazine, ascribes to him).

Evidently Mr Trump does not think it will. Since launching his bid for the Republican nomination on June 16th Mr Trump has ratcheted up the rhetoric about the threats from Mexico and its immigrants, apparently believing this plays well with the white, anti-trade crowd he courts politically. In business, he may feel he can emerge stronger, too. The man who has built his property and media empire around brashness—doing and saying whatever he believes in, whoever it offends—inspires hatred, love, but rarely indifference. That is part of the way he has built his brand.

But business associates are now brushing him off like dandruff, suggesting he has gone too far. NBC, which co-owns the beauty-pageant franchise with Mr Trump, said it is cutting business ties with Mr Trump and will no longer have him as host of "Celebrity Apprentice", its long-running TV reality show. Univision, the Spanish-language broadcaster, ended a five-month old deal to broadcast the pageants to a Hispanic audience. Televisa, its Mexican counterpart, has severed ties, pulling the country’s contestants out of Miss Universe. Ora TV, a television company owned by Carlos Slim, Mexico's richest man, also said it would no longer work with Mr Trump. Organisers of the Miss USA pageant which will take place in Baton Rouge on July 12th have meanwhile noted that six of its contestants were Latinas, four of Mexican descent. Even a hairdressing company, Farouk Systems, chopped its sponsorship deals.

These moves have a business logic. In bashing Mexicans, Mr Trump hurts many Hispanics who have $1.4 trillion in spending power in America, according to Nielsen, which gathers data. They will make up more than half of America’s population growth by 2020, compared with a mere 7% for non-Hispanic whites, and are avid television watchers (NBC owns Telemundo, which, like Univision, is aimed at them). “They’re business people and they can add,” says Alex Nogales of the National Hispanic Media Coalition, a lobbying group. “Diversity is in the air and racist remarks such as Trump’s cannot go unchallenged.” If Mr Trump fails to realize that, he will not only lose the Latino vote. He may lose the TV exposure that his lucrative branding depends on.