Donald Trump tax records reveal bank account in China

Donald Trump has painted Joe Biden as soft on China, but a new report has revealed a curious detail in the US President’s finances.

Donald Trump has a bank account in China, according to The New York Times.

The account is controlled by Trump International Hotels Management LLC – which tax records show paid $US188,561 ($266,876) in taxes in China while pursuing licensing deals there from 2013 to 2015, the newspaper reports – making China one of only three foreign nations alongside the UK and Ireland where Mr Trump maintains a bank account.

The New York Times has dug back into the US President’s tax returns, which it obtained and published details of last month, to highlight his own financial connections as he and other Republicans ramp up attacks on Democratic nominee Joe Biden as being soft on China, amid new revelations about his son Hunter Biden’s business dealings there.

“As far as I’m concerned the Biden family is a criminal enterprise,” Mr Trump told a campaign rally in Carson City, Nevada earlier this week, where he alleged Hunter and his father used “the office of the Vice President for a for-profit cash machine”. “This guy’s a vacuum cleaner, he follows his father around, takes millions, hundreds of millions and billions out of these countries,” he said. “That is so dishonest. I call him the human vacuum cleaner.”

The Trump campaign has flagged he will use Thursday night’s presidential debate in Tennessee to hammer his opponent over the explosive revelations, first reported by the New York Post, contained in a trove of emails and other documents sourced from an abandoned laptop allegedly belonging to Hunter.

At the Nevada rally on Sunday, Mr Trump described it as “the laptop from hell”.

“This was supposed to be a foreign policy debate, so the President still looks forward to forcing Biden to answer the number one relevant question of whether he’s been compromised by the Communist Party of China,” Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien said in a statement on Monday criticising the “biased” Commission on Presidential Debates.

Joe Biden with sons Hunter, left, and Beau in 2009. Picture: David McNew/Getty/AFP

“Why did Biden allow his son Hunter to sell access to him while he was Vice President, and why were there Chinese payment arrangements for Joe himself worked out by Hunter and his sketchy partners? If the media won’t ask Joe Biden these questions, the President will, and there will be no escape for Biden.”

Separately, Senate Republicans last month released an 87-page report – dismissed by Democrats as politically motivated – alleging foreign business dealings by Hunter Biden in countries including China, Russia and Ukraine while his father was Vice President constituted a conflict of interest.

The report flagged Hunter Biden’s “business associations” with “Chinese nationals linked to the Communist government and the People’s Liberation Army”, including jailed energy tycoon Ye Jianming. “Those associations resulted in millions of dollars in cash flow,” the report said. “Hunter Biden opened a bank account with (Ye’s associate) Gongwen Dong to fund a $US100,000 global spending spree with (Joe Biden’s brother) James Biden and (his wife) Sara Biden.”

But The New York Times, which has endorsed Mr Biden for President, says that Mr Trump’s “own business history is filled with overseas financial deals, and some have involved the Chinese state”, noting he “spent a decade unsuccessfully pursuing projects in China, operating an office there during his first run for President and forging a partnership with a major government-controlled company”.

The Internal Revenue Service requires companies to report on the portion of their revenue derived from other countries. According to The New York Times, Trump International Hotels Management regularly reports millions of dollars in revenue from the British and Irish accounts, but just a few thousand dollars from China.

Alan Garten, a lawyer for the Trump Organisation, would not identify the bank in China where the account is held. He told the newspaper the company had “opened an account with a Chinese bank having offices in the United States in order to pay the local taxes” associated with efforts to do business there, after establishing an office in China “to explore the potential for hotel deals in Asia”.

“No deals, transactions or other business activities ever materialised and, since 2015, the office has remained inactive,” Mr Garten said. “Though the bank account remains open, it has never been used for any other purpose.”