a major Chinese financial services firm may invest $4 billion in a Manhattan skyscraper owned by the family of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. And that Kushner’s family stands to take home about $500 million for itself from the transaction.
.. The Kushners would become equity partners with the Chinese firm, Anbang Insurance Group.
.. Best of all for the Kushners, the deal would rescue the family company from the consequences of overpaying for the building, 666 Fifth Avenue, which it purchased in 2007 for $1.8 billion. It would also buy out another prominent Trump political backer who invested in the building, Steve Roth of Vornado Realty, for 10 times his original investment.
.. The New York Times reported in January that Kushner spearheaded the talks with Anbang about an investment in his family’s business
.. “A classic way you influence people is by financially helping their family,” one public interest advocate told the Bloomberg reporters about the Anbang deal.
.. If we’ve learned anything about Trump in the chaotic seven weeks since he assumed the presidency, it’s that his entire clan will test our capacity for surprise, distaste and even outrage when it comes to financial conflicts of interest.
.. the sheer volume of flagrant conflicts that have already emerged may induce “scandal fatigue” in anyone who values – in the most nonpartisan and most non-ideological of ways — ethics and good government.
Trump convinces fewer and fewer Americans that his administration is ‘a fine-tuned machine’
The latest Pew poll reveals that “Trump’s overall job approval is much lower than those of prior presidents in their first weeks in office: 39% approve of his job performance, while 56% disapprove.” He remains a divisive president, with “75% either approve or disapprove of Trump strongly, compared with just 17% who feel less strongly.
.. Trump would have us believe no one cares about his ethical problems. That is false:
Four-in-ten say they are either very (24%) or somewhat (16%) confident that Trump keeps his business interests separate from the decisions he makes as president. Nearly six-in-ten (59%) say they are either not too (15%) or not at all (43%) confident that he is doing this.
.. Young people and highly educated adults express particularly low confidence that Trump is keeping his business interests separate from his decision making as president.
.. “Nearly two-thirds of Americans (64%) say an increasing number of people from different races, ethnic groups and nationalities in the U.S. makes the country a better place to live; fewer (29%) think growing diversity in the country does not make much difference, and just 5% think it makes the country a worse place to live.”
The Lesson of Nordstrom: Do Business With the Trumps or Else
In sum, Nordstrom made a business decision not to do business with the president’s daughter because her clothing line was not selling well, and the president used his official position to attack the company for this decision.
.. The president’s tweet — posted on his personal account and then re-sent from his White House account — is an act of intimidation.
.. This is not the way free markets work, particularly in the United States. We fought a revolution in part against the mercantilism that prevailed in Britain, where the king and members of Parliament played favorites and people who wanted to ingratiate themselves with the government did business with companies in which powerful politicians had an interest (the South Sea Company and the East India Company were the two most notorious examples). Edmund Burke and Adam Smith railed against this type of corrupt relationship between business and government in Britain; similarly, the founders of our country did not want that type of abuse of power going on here.
The modern-day Tea Party movement arose in the aftermath of the Great Recession, a reaction to the perception that politicians were playing favorites in bailing out Wall Street banks and auto companies. The Republican Party for years has made a very strong case for an economy in which market actors make their own decisions free of government interference.
Trust Records Show Trump Is Still Closely Tied to His Empire
While the president says he has walked away from the day-to-day operations of his business, two people close to him are the named trustees and have broad legal authority over his assets: his eldest son, Donald Jr., and Allen H. Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer. Mr. Trump, who will receive reports on any profit, or loss, on his company as a whole, can revoke their authority at any time.
What’s more, the purpose of the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust is to hold assets for the “exclusive benefit” of the president. This trust remains under Mr. Trump’s Social Security number, at least as far as federal taxes are concerned.
.. “First it is revocable at any time, and it is his son and his chief financial officer who are running it.”
.. But lawyers who specialize in federal contracts say the trust arrangement simply creates an additional legal step between Mr. Trump and the hotel — meaning he will still profit from it.
.. “Formally he is no longer the owner, but functionally he still is,” he said.