In the weeks after Donald Trump won the 2016 election, I noted that one of the tenants at Trump Tower was the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, a massive state-owned bank that plays a key role in China’s industrial and, thus, geopolitical designs.
“In two months, that means, the president of the United States will be pocketing rent checks from a state-run megabank owned by the United States’s largest military and economic rival.”
In the first two years of his presidency, Trump pocketed $5.35 million in rent from ICBC, according to a new report from Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability. In the report, the Democrats describe these millions — and millions from other foreign governments, including those of Malaysia and Saudi Arabia — as “emoluments.”
This refers to Article I, Section 9, of the Constitution, which declares that “no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States], shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”
Legal scholars have disagreed over whether this provision applies to the president and what constitutes an “emolument.” But aside from the legalities, what’s obvious to any ethical observer is that it’s undesirable for the U.S. president to be receiving money from foreign governments or state-owned companies.
The Republican criticism of Hunter Biden, for instance, has not focused on his work as a corporate lobbyist for domestic clients but on his work as a foreign agent. We understand it’s dangerous for people close to power in Washington to be in the pay of foreign entities.
Democrats documented $7.8 million that Trump received from foreign entities while in office. This wasn’t before or after he left office. This wasn’t his son receiving the money and then paying back loans to Trump. This was cash paid by foreign companies and governments to a private business owned by the sitting president.
There’s no direct evidence of a quid pro quo, and as son Eric Trump has pointed out, ICBC signed a 20-year lease at Trump Tower in 2008, long before Trump entered electoral politics.
Still, it’s bad for the president to be in the pay of a Communist Chinese corporation or in the pay of entities connected to the Saudi or Malaysian governments.
For one thing, there’s the risk that these foreign entities will expect something in return, policywise, from all the money they spend on the president.
One Asian diplomat made it clear he was paying the high room rate at Trump’s downtown Washington hotel to curry favor with the president. “Why wouldn’t I stay at his hotel blocks from the White House, so I can tell the new president, ‘I love your new hotel!’” the diplomat told the Washington Post. “Isn’t it rude to come to his city and say, ‘I am staying at your competitor?’”
In 2017, when Saudi Arabia was lobbying against a bill to help 9/11 victims’ families sue the Saudis, the kingdom’s lobbyists and consultants spent more than $200,000 at Trump’s luxury hotel in Washington.
Also, Trump used his power as president to reward the businessmen who spent money at his properties. Trump, for instance, in 2019 touted the Ames Companies of Camp Hill as the sort of American business he would help with his trade policies. This sort of commercial for a U.S. employer is typical for politicians. What complicates it is that Ames President Robert Mehmel was a member of the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster.
Mar-a-Lago member Robin Bernstein got an ambassadorship from Trump, and Trump National Golf Club member Adolfo Marzol landed a gig at Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services.
You don’t have to posit a quid pro quo in these cases, or when considering Trump’s foreign-source income, to see unsavory influence. Trump has always judged others by how they treat Trump. He is open about that. He sees people or countries as good if they are good to Trump and vice versa.
The Democrats’ report argues that Trump was initially very soft on China upon taking office. The report recounts one particular moment of intimacy between Trump’s business, China’s government, and Trump’s governance:
“From November 8 to November 10, 2017, after the Chinese Embassy had spent at least $19,391 as an advance deposit for a stay beginning in late August 2017 at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., then-President Trump traveled to China where he lavished praise on President Xi and, notably, defended Chinese trade practices in stark contrast to his previous public pronouncements blaming China’s policies for the U.S.-China trade imbalance. Then-President Trump complimented President Xi, stating, ‘My feeling toward you is an incredibly warm one.’”
Republicans will inevitably argue that Democrats have no credibility on this matter, given Hunter Biden’s international businesses, but that’s not a defense of Trump.
It’s bad for a president, especially an impressionable and self-centered one, to be in the pay of foreign governments.
It’s bad when foreign governments pay millions of dollars to the president
Statolatry attracts grifters like Trump and Biden.