Donald Trump's response to conflicts of interest only makes things worse
Updated
It's no secret that Donald Trump has a sprawling global real estate empire.
But now that he is president-elect of the United States, Trump's extensive business operations leave him mired in conflicts of interest that threaten to undermine the integrity of the presidency itself.
This issue is less captivating than some of the other habits of this unconventional president, but it is no less serious.
The fact that Trump's own personal business interests are tied up in multi-million-dollar operations taking place in at least 20 countries across the world should make us very worried.
So should the fact that Trump is in charge of appointing government officials who will soon be called on to make decisions about unethical business practices in which Trump is personally implicated.
It is conceivable that this will put Trump in the position of choosing between the country's interests and his own. In this respect, his presidency is truly without precedent.
Trump has already broken with tradition by accepting a phone call from the president of Taiwan. Due to the US's strict One China policy, it's been almost four decades since a US president or president-elect has communicated with a sitting Taiwanese leader.
Last week, it was reported that Trump has plans to build a luxury hotel in Taiwan's capital.
Trump's first meeting with a foreign leader as president-elect was with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
In a highly unconventional move, Trump was joined in the meeting by his daughter Ivanka, who not only serves as vice-president for development and acquisitions in The Trump Organisation, but also has business interests of her own; she is looking to close a deal with a Japanese clothing giant whose largest shareholder is the state-owned Development Bank of Japan.
And we have now discovered that Ivanka Trump plans to move her family to Washington, DC.
Of course it's possible that neither of these events were motivated by Trump's business aspirations, but they certainly don't look good.
And regardless of where Trump's loyalty truly lies, aesthetics matter in politics; nowhere more so than in foreign policy.
Even the appearance of Trump toying to with long-settled geopolitical stability in Asia could have repercussions, both for the US and here at home.
Trump's international business conflicts aren't limited to our own geopolitical neighbourhood. Here's a quick rundown of some of the others:
- Trump is a part-owner of a building in Manhattan that carries a $950 million debt, some of which is owed to a large government-owned bank in China.
- The president-elect has made up to $10m to date from Trump Towers Istanbul. Also involved in this huge development is one of Turkey's biggest oil and media moguls, a company that has used its media platform to vocally support the repressive regime of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
- A large development in the ex-Soviet nation of Georgia, which had been put on hold in 2013, was reopened soon after Trump's election. It has been suggested that the Georgian government, implicated as it is in the consequences of the US-Russian relationship, may have supported the project in order to influence Trump's foreign policy in the region.
- During his presidential run, Trump opened eight new companies in Saudi Arabia. On the campaign trail in August, he said: "Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million. Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much."
- Construction of a Trump office building in Buenos Aires is being held up due to an issue with the granting of a permit. The subject of the granting of the permit was reportedly discussed during the President-elect's first phone call with his Argentinian leader Mauricio Macri.
It's not just on the world stage that Trump has problems
Trump has borrowed up to $2.5 billion from Deutsche Bank in the last 20 years. The US Department of Justice is currently negotiating a settlement of up to $14 billion with the bank as a penalty for its predatory lending practices in the lead-up to the global financial crisis.
The settlement will be overseen by the incoming attorney-general, whom Trump will personally appoint.
The irony here should not be lost on us. Trump lambasted Hillary Clinton throughout the campaign for being effectively indebted to the large financial institutions that brought down the US economy in 2008. Trump, on the other hand, is literally indebted to them.
And these are only the conflicts we know about. Unlike any presidential candidate in recent history, Trump has refused to release his tax returns; there could be any number of more serious conflicts that he's managed to keep hidden.
Trump's response to this issue has provided yet more cause for concern.
In continuing to break with the tradition of his recent presidential colleagues, he has resisted calls to put his assets in a blind trust in order to shield against these conflicts of interest.
Trump did announce via Twitter that he will be "leaving my busineses (sic) before January 20th". But he has indicated only that he will transfer the business to his children Don and Eric, plus executives.
This is not exactly the kind of firewall a blind trust is intended to create between a sitting president and his business interests. Here's why:
The concept of a blind trust involves entirely separating yourself from your assets and handing over control to another person.
After the handover, the President-elect is meant to have absolutely no knowledge of, let alone input in, the decisions made about the business.
You can see why it's hard to buy his argument here — a true blind trust would mean Trump would have to impose wide-ranging restrictions on communication with his own children. So Trump's argument starts to feel pretty tenuous pretty quickly.
'A walking, talking violation of the Constitution'
Trump has defended his position by saying that presidents are exempt from the federal law that punishes government officials found to have conflicts of interest.
He is right about this — the president is excluded from the operation of the law — but this is doesn't mean he couldn't find himself in legal trouble; scholars have suggested that Trump's position could violate the US Constitution's Emoluments Clause, which prevents a president from receiving gifts from foreign governments.
If Trump's developments receive favourable treatment in hopes of influencing his policy, he may well find himself offending the Constitution itself.
The Emoluments Clause has not been heavily litigated — so rare is the position Trump has placed the country in — so the scope of it remains unclear.
But the interpretation given to it by constitutional scholars indicates it could well cause problems for the President-elect.
Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Tribe has told MSNBC in no uncertain terms that Trump is in danger of violating the clause:
"He thinks of himself as a babe magnet, but he's an emoluments magnet. And all around the world, everybody wants to go to his hotels and not the competitors, and wants to give him a variance or a special land use permit." he said.
He was also very clear about the fact that Trump's decision to hand over his business to his children does nothing to help his legal situation.
"There's simply no way short of absolutely liquidating all of his cash and assets into a blind trust, and not handed over to his kids," he said.
Tribe said that anything short of this would make Trump a "walking, talking violation of the constitution from the moment he takes the oath".
Regardless of their legality, Trump's conflicts are certainly a breach of both presidential conventions and widely held standards of good government. Unfortunately, it seems unlikely this argument will hold much sway with the electorate.
As Trump himself has pointed out, voters knew about his transnational business empire when they elected him.
In fact, his business acumen was often cited by voters as a reason to support him.
It seems unlikely that these voters will turn on Trump based on the very thing that brought many of them aboard the Trump train to begin with.
The list of Trump's potential conflicts of interest that we are aware of is long and getting longer. Is it unconstitutional? Probably. Is it unethical? Absolutely. Will it matter? The answer to that is anyone's guess.
Whether or not this resonates with Trump's supporters, to the rest of us it should matter a great deal.
Instability in US foreign and domestic policy will have implications the world over, including for Australia.
The question we need to be asking ourselves now and for the next four years is will the 45th president act to further US interests, or his own?
Topics: us-elections, world-politics, government-and-politics, united-states
First posted
