Donald Trump's family-owned business is poised to capitalize on his re-election to the White House, and with even looser restrictions on foreign dealings than his first term as president.
The Trump Organization is sending Eric Trump to speak at a cryptocurrency conference next week in Abu Dhabi, and a New York Times review of financial records and interviews with people knowledgeable about the president-elect's finances found that the company will issue a more limited ethics plan that won't limit its growth.
"His headlining performance will ... represent a golden opportunity to signal that the Trump Organization is wide open for business," the newspaper reported.
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"Eric Trump, [the president-elect's] second son and the company’s de facto leader, is expected to forgo deals directly with foreign governments," the Times added. "But he is not planning to revive the promise the company made eight years ago to swear off all other foreign deals while his father occupies the White House."
The Trump Organization made that guardrail the centerpiece of its 2017 ethics plan, but its ethics "white paper" for this term allows the company to profit from dealings in countries where the U.S. has foreign policy interests, including China, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
"While the Trump Organization is not planning to restore its ban on all foreign deals," the newspaper reported, "it is considering other ethical safeguards it adopted during the first Trump presidency, the people familiar said, as it seeks to blunt public outrage and potential lawsuits."
The precise details of the white paper could change before it's publicly issued in the coming weeks, but the Times reported that the Trump Organization is considering an outside ethics adviser who could have final say over the company's deal-making and donating profits from foreign government officials who visit their hotels or golf clubs to the U.S. Treasury.
“I take it very seriously,” Eric Trump said in a statement. “Over the past 40 years, we’ve built one of the finest real estate portfolios in the world. I have a responsibility to thousands of employees, and at the same time, I understand the responsibility of being part of the First Family again.”
As president, Trump himself is exempt from civil and criminal conflict of interest laws that require other senior federal officials to sell business holdings that could benefit from their actions, but historically individual presidents have voluntarily taken action to avoid such conflicts.
“I fear that Americans will look at public office as a job that is no longer about public service — it is a family business,” said Kedric Payne, senior director for ethics at the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center.