When President Donald Trump welcomes Chinese President Xi Jinping to Washington this week, he’ll meet Xi at the airport and host an elaborate state dinner.
Trump and Xi may also exchange gifts.
Powerful political and business leaders in search of goodwill have showered Trump with gifts in his second term. Many of those gifts have matched Trump’s favorite decorating flourish — gold.
In Trump’s first days back in office in 2025, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave him a gold-plated pager, a replica of the explosive-laden devices the Mossad clandestinely funneled to Hezbollah members. When detonated, the explosions killed 12 people, including two children, and wounded thousands.
Then he received a gold-colored World Boxing Championship belt resembling the one won by a top Ukrainian boxer. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy presented the belt to Trump during a visit to Washington that ended in an Oval Office shouting match.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz was next. He gave Trump a gold-framed copy of the president’s German-born grandfather’s 1869 birth certificate.
Two Japanese prime ministers also bore gifts of gold. Shigeru Ishiba gave Trump a golden samurai helmet in February 2025. Six months later, Ishiba’s successor, Sanae Takaichi, gave the president a putter that belonged to his golf buddy — the late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. She also included a gilded golf ball.
Trump also received gold gifts from two other countries that pledged large investments in the United States: a gem-studded medallion from the United Arab Emirates and a gold-plated crown from South Korea.
And there was the nearly $400 million jet — with gold fixtures — the government of Qatar gave Trump last year, which he started using as Air Force One in July.
Trump brushed aside ethics concerns about the Qatari gift last year, writing on social media that the jet was a gift to the Defense Department — not to him personally — and will be used “temporarily” in a way that is “very public and transparent.”
Other gifts came from private companies or trade groups affected by Trump’s fiscal policies: a glass plaque with a 24-karat gold base from Apple’s Tim Cook, a personally engraved gold bar and a custom gold-plated Rolex clock from Swiss executives and a gold and diamond ring from Belgian jewelers.
The Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause bars officials from accepting anything of value from a foreign government without congressional consent. And the federal Foreign Gifts and Decorations Act requires officials to report, and in most cases surrender, any gift from a foreign source worth more than $480 unless it’s formally accepted on behalf of the U.S.
Two of the 10 gifts — the ring and the gold bar — have been independently appraised for a combined value of more than $155,000; the value of the other four has not been publicly disclosed.
Exchanging ceremonial gifts is “a matter of standard diplomatic protocol” and “routine gestures of diplomatic courtesy” between leaders, said White House spokesperson Davis Ingle, and Trump accepts them “strictly on behalf of the American people.”
“Under federal law and White House policy, these items undergo Secret Service security screening and are transferred to the National Archives and Records Administration, unless designated for official display,” Ingle said in a statement.
“The suggestion that a ceremonial item — regardless of its materials or value — has any influence on major foreign policy or economic decisions like tariffs is completely preposterous,” Ingle said.
Democrats are investigating the gifts and say they see a “troubling pattern,” as their timing “creates an apparent conflict of interest and possible violations of the emoluments clause,” according to a letter Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., sent to U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.
The scrutiny comes as public trust in government has hit its lowest point in decades. A record 89% of Americans now say corruption in the federal government is widespread, according to a Gallup poll — up 10 percentage points from last year and the highest figure Gallup has recorded in 20 years of asking the question.
Trump might have received more gifts. A 2023 House Oversight Committee report found that Trump and his family members failed to report 117 foreign gifts worth about $291,000 during his first term, and that the administration filed no foreign-gift disclosure at all for 2020.
MS NOW reviewed gifts Trump has received since January 2025 — and the trade, tariff or credit concessions that followed. Here is a list:
A plaque mounted on 24-karat gold from Apple
On Aug. 6, 2025, Cook, the CEO of Apple, presented Trump with a glass plaque mounted on a 24-karat gold base in the Oval Office, where Cook announced Apple would add $100 billion to its U.S. manufacturing investment, bringing its total pledge to $600 billion.
Trump said companies making comparable domestic investment commitments would be exempt from a proposed 100% tariff on imported chips.
A gold bar from Swiss executives
On Nov. 4, 2025, a delegation of Swiss executives — including Rolex CEO Jean-Frederic Dufour and Johann Rupert, chairman of the luxury brands group Richemont — presented Trump with a 1-kilogram gold bar engraved with “45” and “47,” and a custom gold Rolex desk clock not sold commercially. Jewelers valued the gold bar at more than $130,000.
Ten days later, on Nov. 14, the U.S. trade representative announced a deal cutting the tariff rate on Swiss goods — including watches and jewelry — from 39% to 15%. White House officials said the gifts were accepted on behalf of Trump’s presidential library, exempting them from the standard National Archives transfer process.
Swiss lawmakers have asked Swiss federal prosecutors to open a criminal inquiry into the executives’ conduct.
Trump has defended the timing of the gifts and his easing of tariffs. At the World Economic Forum in Davos on Jan. 21, 2026, he acknowledged that he lowered the tariffs because the Swiss executives visited him.
“I was paid visits by everybody. Rolex came to see me, they all came to see me,” he said. “But I realized, and I reduced it because I don’t want to hurt people. I don’t want to hurt them. And we brought it down to, you know, lower level.”
Virginia Canter, director of ethics and anti-corruption at the Democracy Defenders Fund, said that if Trump plans to place the gift in his presidential library, he should, like his predecessors, hand it over to the National Archives.
“If Trump fails to go through the National Archives process, he would be viewed as accepting the gifts in his personal capacity,” Canter said. “Accepting these gifts in his personal capacity, however, would raise serious concerns about improper influence given the expensive and transactional nature of the gifts and the pending tariff issues.”
A diamond ring from Belgian jewelers
On June 28, 2026, the Antwerp World Diamond Centre, the Belgian diamond industry’s primary lobbying group, presented Trump with a ring with 321 diamonds, 56 sapphires, 13 emeralds and six rubies. It is engraved “Crafted in Antwerp for Donald John Trump” — marking America’s 250th anniversary. Jewelers appraised its value at $25,000 to $35,000.
Twenty-six days later, on July 24, the Trump administration restored an exemption for diamonds and other gemstones from tariffs on European goods — a status the industry had first secured in September 2025 and lost in February 2026, when the Supreme Court struck down the tariff law it relied on.
Democrats say their requests for an explanation from the Belgian lobbying group have not been answered. The White House and the group rejected any connection between the ring and the tariff concession. The Belgian diamond lobbyists said in an Aug. 13 statement that discussion of U.S. import tariffs was “entirely separate” from the ring.
White House spokesperson Kush Desai said the exemption fulfilled a trade agreement reached with the European Union in the summer of 2025.
“The only special interest guiding the Trump administration’s decision-making is the best interest of the American people,” he said.
A gold-plated crown from South Korea
Just over two months later, on Oct. 29, 2025, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung presented Trump with the Grand Order of Mugunghwa, the country’s highest civilian honor, and a gold-plated replica of a 1,500-year-old Silla dynasty crown. Seoul’s presidential office said the crown was chosen for Trump’s “known preference for gold decorations at the White House.”
The ceremony coincided with the two governments’ finalization of a trade framework built on $350 billion in South Korean investment in the U.S. and a reduction in American tariffs on Korean auto exports. In September 2026, South Korea named its first project: a $22.3 billion gas-fired power plant in Encinal, Texas, built to supply electricity to data centers.
A gem-studded medallion from the UAE
On May 15, 2025, the president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, awarded Trump the Order of Zayed, the country’s highest civilian honor. The gift included a gold- and gem-studded medal “in recognition of his efforts to strengthen” ties between the two nations.
Two days before Trump received the gift, the Commerce Department rescinded a Biden-era rule barring the export of advanced American artificial intelligence chips to countries including the UAE, a restriction Gulf officials had lobbied to overturn. Biden administration officials had said they feared that China could gain access to the advanced AI chips if they were sold to the UAE.
During the same visit, the countries signed an AI agreement supporting a $1.4 trillion, 10-year UAE investment framework, and the UAE pledged $200 billion in additional deals. So far, the UAE has delivered $100 billion in investments and deals within a year of the pledge, and its ambassador has said the country is ahead of schedule on the full $1.4 trillion commitment.
A golden samurai helmet and gold-leaf golf ball from Japan
After Trump received the gifts, Japanese and American officials reached a handshake trade agreement in July that included a pledge from the Japanese government to invest $550 billion in the U.S. That represented more than 10% of Japan’s gross domestic product in 2024, an amount that startled close observers, other foreign leaders and even some in Japan.
In September, the Japanese government released a memorandum of understanding providing more details on the agreement. In February 2026, Japan announced a first tranche of $36 billion for projects in Ohio, Georgia and Texas.
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