The day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday, traditionally marks the start of the pre-Christmas sales season in the US, during which the nation’s retailers compete fiercely for consumer dollars. The difference this year is that the next president is part of the gold rush.
“[US] president-elect Trump loves a great deal,” a promotional e-mail from the Trump-Pence campaign declared. “And in honor of Black Friday, Mr Trump is extending a 30 percent-off deal at the Official Store for Trump Gear.”
The discount applied to such campaign paraphernalia as megaphones, foam thumbs-ups and T-shirts, as well as free delivery on a limited-edition “Make America Great Again” Christmas ornament in the form of a miniature red and gold baseball cap, in return for a minimum donation of US$124.
Illustration: Mountain People
“The brand is certainly a hotter brand than it was before,” Trump told the New York Times on Wednesday last week.
The election victory buzz has been good for business. Since the surprise outcome on Nov. 8, foreign diplomats have been flocking to the newest Trump hotel, in Washington, to hear sales pitches about the business, and vie to book their delegations into rooms overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue, for the inauguration on Jan. 20.
Trump used a meeting with Brexit activists, including his closest British ally, former UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage, to urge them to oppose windf arms, which he felt would spoil the view from one of his Scottish golf courses. He took time out from selecting his Cabinet officials to meet his Indian business partners and pose for pictures with them. The Philippines government announced it was appointing his business partner in Manila as the next ambassador to Washington.
A day after a telephone conversation between Trump and Argentinian President Mauricio Macri, Trump’s Argentinian associate, Felipe Yaryura, who reportedly organized the call, confidently predicted that construction would start next year on the planned Trump Tower Buenos Aires and would be completed by 2020.
Yaryura seemed supremely confident that zoning restrictions, which had stalled the project for years, would soon be swept away.
In his interview last week at the New York Times, Trump insisted he no longer cared about his business interests.
“My company is so unimportant to me relative to what I’m doing, ‘cause I don’t need money, I don’t need anything,” he told the journalists. “The only thing that matters to me is running our country.”
However, much of what he has said and done since winning the election suggests that Trump comes to the presidency in the spirit of a tycoon making a new acquisition, overseeing the merger of Trump Inc and America Inc — a merger in which it is far from clear which would be the senior partner.
Although he claims to have handed over the day-to-day running of the Trump Organization to some of his children, he has so far retained his ownership stake, and those same children are also sitting-in on his meetings with foreign leaders. For example, his daughter Ivanka Trump was in the room during the president-elect’s first meeting with a foreign leader, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
The US has never had a commander-in-chief such as Donald Trump. When the US constitution was being framed, the founding fathers wrote the rules so that people such as themselves, who they expected to fill the presidency, could do so without having to sell off their plantations or slaves. The president is therefore exempt under the constitution from conflict-of-interest laws that constrain other office holders. The discovery of this loophole seems to have surprised and delighted Trump.
“As far as the potential conflict of interest goes,” Trump said, “the law is totally on my side, meaning the president can’t have a conflict of interest.”
The remarks were reminiscent of an earlier president who said that “when the president does it, that means it is not illegal.”
That interpretation of executive power did not work out well for either the US, or for then US-president Richard Nixon.
However, although the conflict-of-interest clauses do have a loophole for presidents, there is no such loophole for what is known as the “emoluments clause,” Article 1, Section 9 of the constitution, which prohibits public officials from taking payments “of any kind whatever from any king, prince or foreign state.”
“Trump was totally wrong when he said the conflict of interest ‘doesn’t apply to me.’ It shows he doesn’t know the constitution,” said Norman Eisen, a former ethics counselor to US President Barack Obama’s administration. “The most fundamental conflict clause in the US constitution is the prohibition on emoluments on payments, presents or other things of value being given to American political officials including the president.”
“Because of his international investments, he gets these payments, presents and things of value, and he’ll be in violation of the constitution the moment he takes the oath of office,” said Eisen, a fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution.
However, before Trump can even take that oath, his election would have to be confirmed by the Electoral College, another legacy of the founding fathers. Under the constitution, what Americans did on Nov. 8 was choose electors, usually party officials, to represent their states in the Electoral College.
It is now up to those 538 electors to choose the president when the college votes on Dec. 19.
“Faithless electors” have in the past gone against the wishes of the people who chose them, but never, so far, in such numbers as to change the outcome of an election. This year, the electors are under more pressure than usual because Trump lost the popular vote to Democratic US presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton by nearly 2 million.
Harvard University constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe said in an e-mail that the “electors who are to cast their votes for president on Dec. 19, not as automatons, but in light of constitutional constraints and principles, cannot in good conscience vote for Donald Trump as president of the United States unless he fully divests himself of economic interests dependent on the fortunes, for good or ill, of the private Trump empire.”
That view is not restricted to academics and Democrats.
Richard Painter, former US president George W. Bush’s chief ethics counsel, said that, without a major reconfiguration of the Trump Organization, the president-elect is heading for a constitutional collision with the Electoral College.
“The important thing for the Electoral College is to ensure that he technically complies with the constitution,” Painter told the Observer. “This is just as important as the birth certificate. He should not be currently on the payroll of foreign governments. So, he’ll have to provide assurance to the Electoral College that he’s not himself going to be getting money from foreign governments that would violate the emoluments clause.”
It is implausible that Trump and his lawyers could offer such assurances without completely severing all links with his business operation. His global empire has been built up in many countries where the line between public and private ownership is thin and blurred. According to a count taken by the Washington Post, a minimum total of 111 Trump companies have done business in 18 countries in South America, Asia and the Middle East.
For example, there are two Trump Towers in Turkey. In addition, during his presidential campaign, he registered eight separate companies in Saudi Arabia, according to the Post.
There is also a hotel being built under the Trump name in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. All these countries have authoritarian leaders, whom Trump has praised in recent years.
Over and above these entanglements, Trump has diplomats on foreign government expenses rushing to check into his hotels, and he has loans from state-owned banks. It is impossible to gauge the extent of his reliance on foreign governments without full disclosure of his business dealings and the publication of his tax returns — which Trump has, thus far, resisted.
“It is catastrophic because you have a man coming to the presidency with a vast network of business interests, domestic and international, that will conflict, clash, collide, with his obligations to pursue the public interest,” Eisen said. “Foreign policy is where conflict of interest, between the public and private interest, is sharpest because he has these projects all over the world. We’ll never know, when he favors an ally or opposes an adversary, whether he’s doing it for the sake of America’s national interest or his pocket book.”
At his meeting with the New York Times, Trump said he was looking at changes he might make, but seemed very reluctant to sell off his empire.
“That’s a very hard thing to do, because I have real estate. I have real estate all over the world, which now people are understanding,” he said. “It really is big, it’s diverse, it’s all over the world. It’s a great company with great assets. I think that, you know, selling real estate isn’t like selling stock. Selling real estate is much different: it’s in a much different world.”
“His view is that the voters know about this and they are OK with it,” said Robert Weissman, president of the Public Citizen watchdog group. “But it is absolutely contradictory to his core message; he was going to sweep away the corruption in Washington and all the deal-making.”
“He will not be able to get away with it for very long. This is a recipe for scandal. This has happened with every president, Democrats like Bill Clinton and Republicans like Richard Nixon. When you get into a scandal, your old friends melt away. It’s an incredibly perilous situation,” Eisen said.
Recently, China launched another diplomatic offensive against Taiwan, improperly linking its “one China principle” with UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 to constrain Taiwan’s diplomatic space. After Taiwan’s presidential election on Jan. 13, China persuaded Nauru to sever diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Nauru cited Resolution 2758 in its declaration of the diplomatic break. Subsequently, during the WHO Executive Board meeting that month, Beijing rallied countries including Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Belarus, Egypt, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, Laos, Russia, Syria and Pakistan to reiterate the “one China principle” in their statements, and assert that “Resolution 2758 has settled the status of Taiwan” to hinder Taiwan’s
Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s (李顯龍) decision to step down after 19 years and hand power to his deputy, Lawrence Wong (黃循財), on May 15 was expected — though, perhaps, not so soon. Most political analysts had been eyeing an end-of-year handover, to ensure more time for Wong to study and shadow the role, ahead of general elections that must be called by November next year. Wong — who is currently both deputy prime minister and minister of finance — would need a combination of fresh ideas, wisdom and experience as he writes the nation’s next chapter. The world that
Can US dialogue and cooperation with the communist dictatorship in Beijing help avert a Taiwan Strait crisis? Or is US President Joe Biden playing into Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) hands? With America preoccupied with the wars in Europe and the Middle East, Biden is seeking better relations with Xi’s regime. The goal is to responsibly manage US-China competition and prevent unintended conflict, thereby hoping to create greater space for the two countries to work together in areas where their interests align. The existing wars have already stretched US military resources thin, and the last thing Biden wants is yet another war.
As Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu’s party won by a landslide in Sunday’s parliamentary election, it is a good time to take another look at recent developments in the Maldivian foreign policy. While Muizzu has been promoting his “Maldives First” policy, the agenda seems to have lost sight of a number of factors. Contemporary Maldivian policy serves as a stark illustration of how a blend of missteps in public posturing, populist agendas and inattentive leadership can lead to diplomatic setbacks and damage a country’s long-term foreign policy priorities. Over the past few months, Maldivian foreign policy has entangled itself in playing