‘The golden age of America’: Trump’s announcements signal his family will keep making deals

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The scale of overlap between Trump’s family members and their business interests, and the government he will lead, all showcased on the same day, underscores how unprecedented the second Trump presidency and the potential for conflicts of interest will be.

“There was at least some concern from the Trump administration during the first term about the optics of financial intermingling between Trump’s businesses and the government,” said Adav Noti, executive director of Campaign Legal Centre, a non-profit ethics group. “What we are seeing with the incoming administration is no longer that kind of concern about those optics. There is an impression that the handcuffs are off.”

Steve Witkoff has known Donald Trump for decades. Here he returns to court for the hearings in Trump’s felony case in New York.Credit: Bloomberg

Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for Trump, rejected the criticism.

“President Trump’s family members are highly respected, intelligent individuals who love our country,” she said in a statement. “They have always played an integral role in President Trump’s campaigns and his first administration and have made many personal sacrifices to help their father make America great again.”

Leavitt also pointed to Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, who secured millions of dollars worth of contracts while his father was vice president from overseas business executives.

Trump family has made clear since the election that it does not intend to forego new international deals as it did in 2017, meaning it will continue to announce new ventures in spots around the world, Eric Trump said in an interview with The New York Times last month.

Hussain Sajwani, CEO of DAMAC Properties, speaks during a news conference with President-elect Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

Hussain Sajwani, CEO of DAMAC Properties, speaks during a news conference with President-elect Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago.Credit: AP

The family still plans to announce an ethics plan that will include hiring an outside legal adviser who will review these deals, in an attempt to avoid special treatment by companies that may be seeking favours from the US government. It also has said that it will not be doing new deals directly with foreign governments while Trump is president.

But the list of new deals has accelerated in recent months as Trump prepares to take office.

Dar Al Arkan, a Saudi-based real estate company, disclosed since the middle of last year that it will build new Trump-named towers in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and in Dubai, in addition to a previously planned project in Oman. Dar Al Arkan and its Dar Global subsidiary are private companies, but they have close ties to the Saudi government.

Kushner, in a podcast last month, disclosed for the first time that he had received $US1.5 billion worth of new funding from the sovereign wealth funds of Qatar and of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. He said he also had a commitment from Saudi Arabia, which had previously agreed to deliver his firm $US2 billion, to extend their agreement to 2029, two years later than the original date.

Kushner, in the interview, said this move means he avoided conflicts of interest, as he said he had negotiated these new commitments before his father-in-law was re-elected.

“I made very clear to them that in the event that Trump was elected, that they should not expect anything from me for that,” Kushner said during the interview, with podcaster Patrick O’Shaughnessy.

Kushner and his firm declined to comment on the record about the matter. To date, Affinity Partners, his company, has invested about $US2 billion of its funds into firms, including about $US129 million into Phoenix Holdings, an Israeli financial services company that has seen its stock value surge since the investment by Affinity.

The plan Trump announced at Mar-a-Lago centred around DAMAC, which he said intended to invest $US20 billion in the United States “over a very short period of time”. The investment apparently focused on data centre that are needed to handle fast-growing demands coming from cloud computing and artificial intelligence industries.

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“We’re very, very excited, now with his leadership and his open strategy and policy to encourage businesses to come to the US,” Sajwani said, after Trump invited him to the stage at the start of his news conference. “For the last four years, we’ve been waiting for this moment.”

DAMAC and the Trump Organisation are in business together in Dubai with a first golf course and have plans to build a second, although this project has long been delayed. But in the United States, Trump said, he intends to use the federal government’s powers to help his family business partner, by offering DAMAC “expedited reviews” of any federal environmental questions that might emerge related to the company’s plans.

“We’re going to move them quickly through the environmental process,” Trump said, adding that a similar benefit would be offered to any company planning to invest $US1 billion in the United States, although DAMAC is the first to get such a promise.

Because Trump is so close to his children, moves they make attract attention regardless of whether there is a component related to the Trump Organisation. For instance, three of Trump’s incoming government officials posted photos to social media of themselves travelling with Donald Trump Jr, a key political voice with his father, to Greenland, which the president-elect has said he wants the US government to acquire for strategic purposes. Donald Trump Jr is not joining his father’s government, and did not appear to have held any meetings related to any kind of development.

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But the LIV Golf announcement means that the Saudi-financed tournament will be back at Trump’s Doral resort in April, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars at the venue.

The event also drives thousands of ticket-buying fans to the resort, filling up hotel restaurants and guest rooms. LIV events also boost the international profile of the more than a dozen Trump family golf resorts around the world.

“What they’re doing with LIV is very important,” Trump told the Times at the 2022 competition at Doral, which as of this year will have been used four times by LIV Golf for tournaments. “They’re putting a lot of effort into it and a lot of money into it, as you see.”

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