The Trump company is not banning private foreign deals, a break with its first term policy
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The Trump family business released a voluntary ethics agreement Friday that marks a significant departure from Donald Trump's first term by allowing it to strike deals with private foreign companies. The so-called ethics white paper bars the Trump Organization from striking deals directly with foreign governments, but allows ones with private companies abroad. A six-page ethics pact that Trump signed eight years ago barred both foreign government and foreign company deals.
The Trump company also announced it was hiring an outside ethics adviser to vet deals as it did in the first term. "The Trump Organization is dedicated to not just meeting but vastly exceeding its legal and ethical obligations during my father’s Presidency,” said executive vice president Eric Trump.
The Trump Organization recently struck deals for hotels and golf resorts in Vietnam, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, raising concerns by government ethics experts and watchdogs that president-elect Trump's personal financial interests could influence policy toward those countries.
The family company has expressed interest in striking deals in Israel and elsewhere, and has financial interests in two businesses with publicly traded stock that could get a boost from foreign investors. That includes Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of social media platform Truth Social, and a new cryptocurrency venture, World Liberty Financial.
“The scale of corruption will be orders of magnitude greater than what we saw in the first Trump administration," said government ethics lawyer Kathleen Clark of Washington University School of Law in St. Louis. People trying to win Trump's favor now have an easy way to do so, she said, by using “massive influxes of cash through ‘investments’ in Trump crypto and real estate ventures.”.
