How Donald Trump has profited worldwide from his presidency – DW – 07/05/2025

DW

8 hours ago

With Donald Trump's return to the White House, the Trump family's fortune is surging as many question the line between presidential power and private profit. In just six months back in office, Donald Trump's company the Trump Organization has rolled out 12 new international business projects — surpassing the total from Trump's entire first term. And with each new deal, the same question grows louder: Where does President Trump's public duty end, and where does his private empire begin?
Back in 2017, Donald Trump publicly called Qatar "a funder of terrorism." Fast-forward to 2025, and the first foreign deal secured by the Trump Organization after Trump's return to the Oval Office is happening in Qatar itself.
The project, just outside Doha, will feature a luxury resort and an 18-hole golf course, branded as the Trump International Golf Club & Villas.
On paper, the development is being carried out by real estate developers Qatari Diar and the Saudi company Dar Global. But Qatari Diar is no ordinary private company — it was set up by Qatar's sovereign wealth fund and is chaired by a government minister, effectively making it an arm of the Qatari state.
Just weeks before President Trump's scheduled visit to Qatar in May 2025, Eric Trump traveled there to help advance the negotiations.
The Trump Organization has maintained that the partnership was secured through Dar Global, a Saudi firm, and not directly with Qatari Diar. But that explanation hardly puts the questions to rest, since Dar Global itself has close and well-documented ties to the Saudi royal family.
Meanwhile, Trump's May trip brought another issue: The Qatari government offered the United States a customized Boeing 747, a so-called "flying palace" worth around $400 million, as a diplomatic gift.
Beyond these business entanglements, the US relationship with Qatar remains complicated. While Qatar has faced criticism for supporting Hamas, it has also positioned itself as a key intermediary in ceasefire negotiations in Gaza. These conflicting roles — friend, funder, and fixer — only deepen the unease about Trump's willingness to entangle presidential diplomacy with private profit.
In a series of dubious coincidences, weeks before Trump's Gulf trip in May 2025, the Trump Organization revealed a new partnership with Dar Global. The deal plans to build the Middle East's first Trump International Hotel and Tower in Dubai, marking their fifth regional collaboration.
Addressing the US- Saudi Investment Forum during the visit, Trump laid out a regional vision built on "national sovereignty," pointedly rejecting the idea of lecturing Middle Eastern governments about democracy or human rights.
The same day, Trump unveiled the largest defense deal in US history — a $142-billion package. This binds Washington even closer to a regime accused of repeated human rights violations.In light of this, Trump's closeness with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) is notable. Human rights groups and intelligence agencies have long linked the crown prince to brutal crackdowns and abuses, including the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi — a killing the CIA concluded was personally ordered by MBS. Saudi Arabia has also continued to harass dissidents even on US soil.
Furthermore, Saudi Arabia's regional position is also of significance. The kingdom is trying to emerge as a mediator in the Ukraine war and negotiating with Israel in exchange for concessions on Palestine. These contradictions would normally make a US president think twice before rewarding MBS with closer ties.
Back in early 2024, five US businessmen with Serbian roots attended a reception at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. By early 2025, Serbian-American ties seemed poised for a fresh chapter.
Rod Blagojevich, a longtime Trump ally and former Illinois governor, visited Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić in Belgrade and used the trip to publicly criticize Kosovo's Prime Minister Albin Kurti, accusing him of overseeing what he called "ethnic cleansing" against Serbs living in Kosovo.
That rhetoric carried deep echoes of the region's painful past. In 1999, the United States and NATO bombed Serbia to force its military out of Kosovo in order to stop the violent expulsion of ethnic Albanians.
Then, a few weeks into Trump's second term, a $500 million real estate project in Belgrade was back in the news.
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Led by Jared Kushner's Miami-based firm Affinity Partners, the plan means building a luxury hotel and apartment complex on the site of the former Yugoslav Ministry of Defense — a landmark heavily bombed during the NATO air campaign.
Trump himself had shown interest in developing the property as far back as 2014, even though local critics saw the replacement of a war memorial with a luxury tower as deeply disrespectful.
By May 2025, the obstacles to that plan had been cleared. Under the agreement, the project will feature a 175-room hotel, more than 1,500 luxury apartments, and a new memorial to victims of the NATO bombing.
As President Donald Trump prepared for a July 2025 visit to Vietnam, his family business was moving quickly in the country as well.
In late May, the Trump Organization announced a partnership with a subsidiary of Vietnam-listed Kinh Bac City Development Holding Corp. to develop a $1.5-billion golf course, resort, and residential estate in Hung Yen province, just south of Hanoi.
Unveiling the project, Eric Trump praised Vietnam as "one of the most dynamic and promising markets in the world today." The timing of the deal was striking, coming just as the US and Vietnam were hammering out the details of a high-stakes trade agreement.
That trade deal was crucial for Vietnam. At the time, the government was facing threats from Trump of a punishing 46% tariff on Vietnamese goods. In the end, negotiators settled on a 20% tariff.
Against this backdrop, the Trump Organization's massive resort deal raises serious concerns about conflicts of interest.
Eric Trump put it bluntly last October: His family, he argued, had not received sufficient credit for actually pulling back during the first Trump administration. But a congressional probe released last January showed that Trump-owned businesses received at least $7.8 million from 20 foreign governments during his first term, including the governments of China, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, and Malaysia. Some independent watchdogs have estimated that the real figures were even higher.
Now, with the second-term green light, the Trump Organization is pushing full throttle. Its international expansions, Trump's presidential visits, and personal entanglements continue to blur the line between presidential power and private gain.