The following article by Lisa Rein was posted on the Washington Post website January 11, 2017:
The head of the federal Office of Government Ethics on Wednesday denounced President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to separate the presidency from his business empire as “wholly inadequate” and said it does not meet the standards met by the “best of his nominees.”
The following article by Simon Denyer and Jonathan O’Connell was published on the Washington Post website December 26, 2016:
President-elect Donald Trump speaks in Hershey, Pa., during his “thank you” tour. (Don Emmert/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images)
BEIJING — Donald Trump calls China an “enemy” of the United States, a threat and an international pariah whose modus operandi is to lie, cheat and steal — but for at least eight years his hotel chain has been trying to do business here.
Although negotiations have yet to bear fruit, Trump Hotels has made confident predictions this year about opening 20 or 30 luxury hotels in China. It is an ambition that would involve the company in direct negotiations with a Communist Party that the president-elect professes to fundamentally distrust.
On Dec. 12, Trump tweeted that he would do “no new deals” during his time in the White House. It is not clear what that means for Trump Hotels as a company, and both the Trump Organization and the Trump transition team declined to comment for this article.
If Trump Hotels goes ahead with its efforts to expand to China, or even if it only lays plans to do so after his term in office, it could hugely complicate one of the most important foreign policy relationships Trump will have to negotiate during his presidency. And the suspicion that Trump as president might be trying to badger China or butter it up to promote his business there risks coloring perceptions of his every move in regard to Beijing — even those that are completely aboveboard. Continue reading “Trump Hotels has had its eye on China — but the door hasn’t opened”
The head of the federal Office of Government Ethics on Wednesday denounced President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to separate the presidency from his business empire as “wholly inadequate” and said it does not meet the standards met by the “best of his nominees.”