Testing the Boundaries
The president has said the company won’t do any new international deals while he’s in office, but moves by the business in the past month are already testing the boundaries of that vow. A hotel planned for Dallas is backed by investors from Turkey, Qatar and Kazakhstan. The Trump Organization is considering reviving a resort development deal at Cap Cana in the Dominican Republic, dormant since the 2008 financial crisis, after Eric Trump visited the site earlier this month.
Existing deals are also testing Trump’s independence. The world’s biggest lender, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd., is a tenant at Trump Tower in New York, and Trump’s business partner for a tower in the Philippines serves as special government envoy to the U.S.
Critics have also targeted Trump’s upscale hotel inside the historic Old Post Office in Washington, which opened for business weeks before the election. The lease with the federal government to operate the hotel expressly prohibits any elected official from benefiting from the property.
In their profiles on the Trump organization’s website, describing “the next generation,” Donald Trump Jr, 39, is listed as an executive vice president at the family business. Eric Trump, 33, is executive vice president of development and acquisitions, “responsible for all new project acquisition, development and construction around the world.”
Daughter Ivanka Trump was involved in the early stages of the Dubai development; on her website she described “reviewing design elements and checking in on the progress” of the golf course, resort and residential community during a visit in May 2015. Trump, 35, has stepped away from the family business and moved to Washington where her husband, Jared Kushner, 36, is a senior adviser to the president.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.