In January 2017, just days before President-elect Donald Trump took office for the first time, he announced that to avoid the appearance of any conflict of interest or foreign influence, he had backed away from a new $2 billion business deal with a Dubai-based developer that had built his Trump-branded golf course in the United Arab Emirates.
In January 2025, just days before returning to the White House for a second time, Trump announced that Damac Properties — the same Dubai-based developer he had turned down eight years prior — said it would invest $20 billion in building data centers in the U.S., as the president himself raked in more than $10 million in licensing and management fees over the years from that Dubai golf course.
The Trump Organization no longer appears to be shying away from new business opportunities with Damac, either. The president just last year earned at least $10 million in license fees tied to two projects with Damac in Abu Dhabi that have yet to be publicly announced, including in Al Raha Beach, according to his latest financial disclosure. Few details are known about those projects, as the Trump Organization has yet to officially announce new initiatives in those locations.
In contrast to the relative restraint of his first term — when concerns about potential conflicts of interest and foreign influence kept the Trumps away from new overseas projects, and even had them back away from pending projects in Russia, China, Israel and the UAE — Trump’s family businesses have approached foreign dealings in his second term by rapidly expanding their footprint around the globe, announcing new projects month after month.
According to MS NOW’s tally, based on the president’s personal financial disclosures and listings and public announcements from the Trump Organization and its partners, the Trump Organization has at least 19 new golf courses, hotels, resorts, towers and other projects currently under development or pending abroad.
At least a dozen of those projects have been announced by the Trump Organization since the 2024 presidential election, with another five unannounced projects listed in Trump’s financial disclosures — all of which suggests the president’s family business is moving full steam ahead in its pursuit of foreign business deals.
The president earned almost $60 million from various real estate licensing and management deals around the world in just the first year of his second term, his latest financial disclosure shows. During the 2024 presidential election year, he brought in at least $45 million from similar foreign deals.
Trump, since his return to the White House, has distanced himself from the Trump Organization and has said he has given his older sons control of the family business to avoid potential conflicts of interest, as he did in his first term. But the president’s ethics pledge this time around is different from his first term’s, in that it no longer prohibits his family business from making new business deals with foreign (nongovernmental) partners — something the president vowed to stay away from the first time.
“The second term makes the first term look quaint,” said Robert Maguire, research director at the ethics group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, who has done extensive research into the Trump family businesses and the ethical issues connected to the presidency. “As soon as Trump became the presumptive nominee in 2024, he began a rash of incorporations that included a number of new foreign developments, and he has continued that throughout his presidency.”
“We’ve never had a dichotomy like this where people are in difficult straits financially and the president of the United States is literally making billions of dollars in office off of businesses,” Maguire said.
Asked about the Trump Organization’s foreign licensing deals and concerns about potential conflicts of interest, a White House official referred MS NOW to the Trump Organization, saying, “This has nothing to do with the White House.” The White House has previously stated that the president and his family have never engaged in business dealings raising conflicts of interest and never will, and that the president has only acted in accordance with the nation’s interest.
“For nearly five decades, the Trump Organization has been a leader across real estate, hotels, golf, and residential and commercial properties — a legacy built over generations of the Trump family’s deep roots in the property business,” a Trump Organization spokesperson told MS NOW. “The company operates completely separate from the presidency and is in full compliance with all ethics and conflict-of-interest laws.”
“In keeping with that commitment, the organization has not only implemented a comprehensive set of internal ethical standards, but also appointed an independent outside ethics advisor to ensure continued transparency, uphold the highest standards of integrity, and avoid even the appearance of impropriety,” the spokesperson said.
Expansion in the Middle East
In 2015, when real estate developer and reality television star Donald Trump jumped into the world of politics, his overseas portfolio included his signature golf courses in Scotland and Ireland and a handful of Trump-branded buildings in South Korea, Turkey, Panama and Canada.
In the past decade, the Trump family’s foreign business portfolio has expanded exponentially. While the president’s prized golf courses in Scotland and Ireland continue to be his biggest sources of foreign real estate income, the Trump Organization’s footprint has expanded, particularly in the Middle East and in Asia, boasting at least 14 Trump family-owned or -branded luxury golf resorts, hotels, apartments, mansions and commercial buildings currently open and operating around the world.
Some of them, including the Dubai golf course developed by Damac, were launched before Trump’s first term, allowing new Trump-branded golf courses and luxury towers to pop up in India and the Philippines during his first term, as his pledge at the time didn’t prohibit the Trump Organization from continuing on with existing partnerships with foreign companies.
After Trump left office, however, the Trump Organization’s foreign investments began to explore new deals abroad. The company’s major new overseas projects kicked off in 2022 with “the AIDA project,” a massive, $500 million project in Muscat, Oman. A Trump-branded commercial and residential complex — 100 meters above the shore, to include a golf course, a five-star hotel and luxury villas — was touted as “one of Oman’s most expansive and ambitious initiatives, marking a significant leap forward in the region’s luxury real estate and tourism industries.” The collaboration with Saudi Arabian developer Dar Al Arkan and its international arm, Dar Global, has already paid almost $10 million in licensing fees to Trump since 2022, according to financial disclosures.
Since then, the Trump Organization announced at least five additional projects with either Dar Al Arkan or Dar Global, including an exclusive golf resort, hotels and mansions in Wadi Safar, Saudi Arabia; a Trump-branded skyscraper in Jeddah; and more Trump-branded towers in Dubai, Doha, Qatar and the Maldives.
In all, Trump has made at least $61 million in license fees just from projects with Dar Al Arkan and Dar Global since 2021, his financial disclosures show. The Saudi developer, which reportedly has deep ties to the Saudi government and royal stakeholders, has quickly become one of the Trump Organization’s biggest real estate partners.
At the same time as Trump touts his close relationships with the Saudi royals and leaders from the UAE and other Gulf nations, and hosts them at the White House, his family businesses reportedly get massive licensing deals and crypto investments from companies based in those countries. Critics continue to raise questions about potential conflicts of interest.
“It is true that the president and the vice president are exempted from a lot of the rules that federal officials have to follow,” Maguire said. “It is also true that every other president has followed these rules stringently.
“We had [Barack] Obama asking whether or not he could keep his Nobel Prize and getting approval for it; George Bush had a part ownership in the baseball team, the [Texas] Rangers, that he sold,” Maguire continued. “There’s a long history of presidents coming into office and making sure that the American people didn’t have reason to think that they were acting in anything other than the national interest.”
Expansion in Asia and elsewhere
The Trump Organization is also expanding its presence in India, where multiple luxury Trump-branded buildings have been built in Mumbai, Delhi, Pune and Kolkata, with at least three more properties under development in Gurgaon, Pune and Hyderabad — as well as unannounced projects in Noida and Mumbai that appear in Trump’s financial disclosures.
Several of those new projects are collaborations with the real estate development arm of a massive Indian conglomerate, Reliance Industries, including an unannounced project in Mumbai from which Trump earned a $10 million “development fee” in 2024.
Trump’s relationship with Reliance has also gone beyond personal business interests: The president announced on his social media platform earlier this year that Reliance Industries is opening a $300 billion oil refinery in Texas as part of foreign investments his administration claims it’s bringing into the United States.
Last year, during Trump’s visit to Egypt, the Trump Organization’s businesses in Indonesia came under the spotlight when Trump and Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto were caught on a hot mic appearing to discuss the Trump family business. The Indonesian president asked to “meet with Eric,” referring to Trump’s son Eric Trump, who is heavily involved in running the Trump Organization. Trump responded, “He’s such a good boy. I’ll have Eric call you,” remarks that drew backlash from critics over concern that the president was mixing politics with his business interests.
Eric Trump, in a later appearance on Real America’s Voice, brushed off those concerns, explaining that there are two Trump-branded properties in Indonesia and claiming, “I don’t get involved in politics in Indonesia — but when I heard that, I started laughing.”
Dar Global, Dar Al Arkan, Damac and Reliance Industries did not respond to MS NOW’s requests for comment.
‘I found out that nobody cared’
In the past year, the Trump Organization has ventured into completely new frontiers, including Trump Towers in Bucharest, Romania, and Tbilisi, Georgia, and a luxury golf resort and residences in Hung Yen, Vietnam, amid reported controversies over compensation to local farmers who will be displaced.
Vietnam’s then-prime minister, Pham Minh Chinh, even personally expressed support for expediting and expanding Trump-branded developments in the country, as the Vietnamese government was engaged in efforts to avoid tariffs from the Trump administration. Vietnamese officials, according to The New York Times’ reporting, have said that they hope the Trump golf project will serve as a “good-will token” and “further intertwine the U.S. and Vietnam.”
More recently, the Trump family business announced plans to build a golf course in Hanam, South Korea, the second Trump-branded property in the country after the Trump World Seoul tower was built in the mid-2000s.
Maintaining that the Trump Organization has followed strict ethical standards and avoided conflicts of interest, Eric Trump in 2024 expressed frustration that they “got crushed anyway” despite doing “everything imaginable to avoid any appearance of impropriety.”
The president himself was more direct when asked by The New York Times why he was allowing his family to make foreign business deals this time around while repeating claims about the Biden family’s alleged business dealings abroad: “Because I found out that nobody cared. I’m allowed to.”
“I think Trump is going to find out in the long term that he is wrong about that,” CREW’s Maguire told MS NOW.
“As it becomes more and more obvious that Trump is having the most lucrative period of his life as president, while people are finding it harder to afford gas and groceries, once things start to really impact people’s pocketbooks, they start to pay a lot more attention to the people who are making out like gangbusters,” Maguire said.
Lily Becker and Emily Hung contributed to this report.
The post Trump Organization’s overseas projects proliferate amid conflict-of-interest concerns appeared first on MS NOW.
