Donald Trump’s lightweight defense of taking property for private development [updated with a brief discussion of pipeline takings]

Donald Trump.

In tonight’s GOP presidential debate, Donald Trump, who has a history of lobbying governments to take property for his own private projects, once again offered a dubious defense of takings for private development:

Eminent domain is an absolute necessity for a country, for our country. Without it, you wouldn’t have roads, you wouldn’t have hospitals, you wouldn’t have anything. You wouldn’t have schools, you wouldn’t have bridges…

And what a lot of people don’t know because they were all saying, oh, you’re going to take their property. When somebody — when eminent domain is used on somebody’s property, that person gets a fortune. They get at least fair market value, and if they are smart, they’ll get two or three times the value of their property. But without eminent domain, you don’t have roads, highways, schools, bridges or anything.

The best that can be said for Trump’s latest defense of eminent domain for private projects is that it is less absurd than his previous claim that such condemnations are really “not taking property” at all. Still, almost everything Trump says here is false. The vast majority of hospitals, schools, and other similar structures were and are built without the use of eminent domain. Those who construct them can acquire property through voluntary purchase, just like everyone else. It is also false to claim that people who lose their property to eminent domain typically get “a fortune.” In reality, they often fail to get even the “fair market” value required by Supreme Court precedent; and fair market value is itself inadequate compensation for the many property owners who value their land above its current market price (for example, because they have close social ties in the neighborhood, which would be lost if they were forced to move). If eminent domain really were a good way to make a fortune, the Donald Trumps of the world would be actively lobbying the government to condemn their property. But that rarely, if ever, happens.