‘The golden age of America’: Trump signals his family will keep making deals

Washington: President-elect Donald Trump was at the lectern talking through the approaching inauguration of his second term. But across the ballroom at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, was a display of the extraordinary way that his family business interests are now fully mixed with his plans for governance of the United States.

Trump opened the unusual news conference by introducing Hussain Sajwani, founder and chair of DAMAC Properties, a Dubai, United Arab Emirates-based real estate firm that partnered with the Trump family a decade ago to build the first Trump-branded golf course in the Middle East.

Properties and firms owned by Donald Trump and his sons, Eric (centre) and Donald Jr, are set to gain from deals signed with overseas investors.Credit: AP

Now, Trump said, DAMAC was planning to invest billions of dollars in the US to build data centres, with the help of Trump and the federal government, even while DAMAC continued its role as a Trump business partner.

There, too, in the room at Mar-a-Lago was Steve Witkoff, who is in business with a new crypto company called World Liberty Financial that Trump and his sons helped start. Witkoff, while still working with the crypto company, is serving as Trump’s Middle East envoy, and Witkoff provided an update from the stage on efforts to release Israeli hostages held in the Gaza Strip.

Trump pointed out that one of his sons, Eric, who has been pushing new Trump Tower deals in the Middle East, was at the back of the ballroom, as well, on the same day that LIV Golf, the Saudi-financed golf league, disclosed it intends to host another tournament this year at the Trump National Doral resort near Miami. This means that money tied to the Saudi government will continue to flow to the Trump family, even when Trump is back in the White House – LIV Golf is owned by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund.

And Trump Organisation’s other major Middle East business partner, Dar Al Arkan, disclosed that it planned to start building projects in the US for the first time, according to a report by Reuters. Dar Al Arkan did not respond to a request for comment.

The Saudi-backed golf league said on Tuesday that it would return to Trump’s Doral resort in April.Credit: AP

It all comes as Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, recently disclosed that he has raised an additional $US1.5 billion ($US 2.4 billion) from Middle East investors for his private equity company. The firm he started after he left his adviser position in the White House in 2020 now has more than $US4.5 billion, mostly from oil-rich sovereign wealth funds.

“This will be the golden age of America – this is the golden age of America,” Trump said, as he was wrapping up his more than hour-long news conference, not referring to his own family business operations, but his confidence in the future path of the nation. “We’re going to have a great country again.”

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, pictured during Trump’s court case last year, has known the president-elect for decades.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 from overseas business executives while his father was vice president.

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

DAMAC Properties chief executivce Hussain Sajwani at a news conference with Trump at Mar-a-Lago.Credit: AP

However, 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 it would not be doing new deals directly with foreign governments while Trump was 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 last year that it would build new Trump-named towers in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and 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 said this move meant he had avoided conflicts of interest because 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 whose stock value has surged 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 US “over a very short period of time”. The investment apparently focused on data centres that are needed to handle fast-growing demands coming from cloud computing and artificial intelligence industries.

“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 golf course and have plans to build a second, although this project has long been delayed. But in the US, Trump said, he intended 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 US. 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.

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 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.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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