As President Biden deflects Republican criticism of his son Hunter’s business entanglements, congressional Democrats have adopted the same tactic towards former President Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination in the 2024 election. 

Last week, Democrat members of the House Oversight Committee published a report detailing the millions of dollars spent by foreign governments on Trump Organization properties during his presidency. China topped the list of 20 countries for foreign government spending.

This week, The Wire details which Chinese companies were the highest spenders at Trump’s properties during his time in office.

A PRESIDENT AND A BUSINESSMAN

In January 2017, days before his presidential term began, President Trump announced his plan to hand over operational control of his real estate company, the Trump Organization, to his two sons. Trump resigned from his leadership positions, but retained his ownership stake in the company during his time in office.

China tops the list of foreign governments that in total spent at least $7.8 million at Trump-owned businesses and properties during his presidency, according to the report published last week. Spending from Chinese state-affiliated entities amounted to at least $5,572,548, significantly higher than the next-highest spender, Saudi Arabia, at $615,422.

The report compiled evidence based on testimony provided by President Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars. The firm handed over documents in response to a legal order until Oversight Committee chairman, Rep. James Comer (R-KY), released Mazars from its obligation in January 2023. The Democratic committee members therefore assert that the $7.8 million total is “almost certainly only a fraction of Trump’s harvest of unlawful foreign state money.”

“The report strongly supported the notion that President Trump had a dual attitude towards China,” says Philip M. Nichols, professor of legal studies and business ethics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. “One was his public-facing attitude, where he continued to bash China and throw red meat to his supporters. But on a more policy-creating level, he seemed to accommodate China in ways that contradicted his China bashing.”

The roughly $5.5 million in Chinese spending primarily covers office space that the state-owned Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) leased at Trump Tower in New York. In addition, Hainan Airlines paid for an apparent 14-month stay at Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas between November 2016 and January 2018. Hainan Airlines’ parent, HNA Aviation Group, is indirectly controlled in part by state-owned conglomerate CITIC, according to WireScreen. 

“By elevating his personal financial interests and the policy priorities of corrupt foreign powers over the American public interest, former President Trump violated both the clear commands of the Constitution and the careful precedent set and observed by every previous Commander-in-Chief,” Jamie Raskin, the leading Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said in the report’s foreword.

President Trump’s son Eric called the report’s findings “a joke” in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. “All foreign government profits, for stays at our hotels and other properties while my father was in office, were voluntarily donated to the United States Treasury,” says Eric Trump, who serves as the executive vice president of the Trump Organization.

The former president characterized the near-$8 million figure as legitimate business transactions when asked about the report during a Fox News town hall on Wednesday.

“If I have a hotel and somebody comes in from China; that’s a small amount of money,” President Trump said. “But I was doing services for them.”

“I don’t get $8 million for doing nothing, like Hunter,” he added, referring to President Biden’s son.

Former administration officials also push back against the notion that they faced barriers in pursuing a tough agenda on China.

One priority was reciprocity, says David Stilwell, who served as Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs from 2019 to 2021. “I was going to get a pound of flesh for every time they took it from me when I was in Beijing as defense attaché. I told the ambassador that. In attaché school we learned that reciprocity is the most basic tool of diplomacy, but we hadn’t been using it.”

Do we want to change the system just to deal with [Trump] and risk hamstringing presidents for the next 100 years? It’s brand new territory.

Philip M. Nichols, professor of legal studies and business ethics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

Stilwell draws a line between 2017 to 2019, when the Trump administration still gave some concessions in the hopes of achieving a limited trade agreement with China, and the remainder of the former president’s term when attitudes towards the country shifted as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as disagreements over Hong Kong and the implementation of the January 2020 trade agreement.

The emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution states that federal officeholders cannot accept benefits from foreign states, but legal challenges launched during President Trump’s term ended without a clear answer from the Supreme Court as to whether his extensive business interests were in violation of this clause.

“The court has said bribery is the only thing we can pursue anymore with respect to corruption, and they have a very strict definition of bribery,” says Nichols from the Wharton School. “So the remedy would generally seem to be political.”

Read below for more details on spending from Chinese companies at Trump Organization properties, including by telecommunications giant Huawei and energy firm CEFC. The latter two are wholly private entities and were not included in the $5.5 million figure in the Oversight Committee report.

Polls show that President Trump remains the frontrunner for the Republican Party nomination in the 2024 election despite mounting criminal charges, raising the question of whether he would face any new limitations on his business activities during a potential second term. However, analysts say that this is unlikely, since White House ethics rules are intentionally looser for the president than for his appointed staff in order to discourage overly politicized investigations.

“President Trump seems to be a once-in-a-100-years kind of phenomenon,” says Nichols. “Do we want to change the system just to deal with him and risk hamstringing presidents for the next 100 years? It’s brand new territory.”

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