Donald Trump is the current frontrunner to earn the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election. But his golf empire and involvement with foreign governments could bring him a lot of scrutiny.
As the Wall Street Journal reported this week, Donald Trump has expanded his massive golf and real estate empire into many countries throughout the world since leaving office in 2021.
“Since 2021, the Trump Organization, which had paused or pulled back from ventures during his presidency, has revived its global expansion efforts. The company is building a second golf course in Scotland and has branding deals with residential projects in India and resort developments in Indonesia,” the Wall Street Journal reported.
“In late 2022, the Trump Organization agreed to manage and brand a $1.6 billion golf and resort project in Oman, teaming up with Dar Al Arkan, a Saudi real-estate firm. Trump reported more than $5 million in income from that partnership in his 2022 financial-disclosure form. He also has golf courses, hotels, resorts, condominiums and other ventures in more than 10 countries on four continents.”
Trump and his organization have agreed to pause new projects if he wins his second presidential bid, but one expert doesn’t think that’s good enough.
“Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, pointed out that governments of countries such as Indonesia, India and Oman would be able to use their power over ongoing Trump projects to influence U.S. government policy in a second Trump administration. Simply deciding to put an end to new projects to deal with conflict-of-interest concerns would be ‘utterly inadequate,’ she said,” the Wall Street Journal reported.
In addition to his real estate empire, Trump also has a business relationship with LIV Golf, which is backed by the Saudi Arabian government via its Public Investment Fund. Trump’s courses regularly host LIV Golf events, meaning that Trump essentially has an ongoing business relationship with a foreign government.
All in all, it’s not great for a sitting president to have such strong conflicts of interest involving so many foreign governments.
