Here’s but one example: Trump owns eight hotels here in America, including Chicago, Las Vegas, New York City, Honolulu, and most recently in Washington, D.C., itself, after Trump leased the historic Old Post Office Building and turned it into a Trump hotel. Since the property owner is still the government, and the deal was made with Trump pledging future amounts of revenue, it entangled Trump’s company in potential future legal and financial wrangling with the Government Services Administration (GSA) — an agency which President Trump would ultimately be in charge of. So how President Trump staffs and influences the GSA could help decide the fate of his D.C. hotel venture.
Or consider this: Germany’s Deutsche Bank has been one of Trump’s long-time suppliers of credit. The bank provided him with hundreds of millions in loans to finance the D.C. hotel and other projects. Deutsche Bank, which does plenty of business in America, has already been hit with massive fines by U.S. regulators for various shenanigans. So what happens when a foreign bank that federal regulators oversee is a creditor to the president those regulators answer to? The same problem could play out with banks in China and other foreign countries that Trump has had dealings with.
Trump has also made extensive use of the partnership business model in his domestic and foreign dealings, which sets up yet more perverse possibilities around the world. As an example, Trump has suggested he would end U.S. military support for South Korea, which would force that government to turn to domestic firms for a lot of military supplies and infrastructure. One South Korean construction company likely to reap a windfall in that scenario is, you guessed it, in a corporate partnership with Trump himself.
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