trump industries

Separating the Man from the Brand

As frantic parents rushed to the mall for last minute shopping and little kids stuffed their faces with holiday cookies this Christmas Eve, president-elect Donald Trump released a statement promising to cease operations of the Trump Foundation, his controversial and scandal-plagued charitable organization, in the name of avoiding potential conflicts of interest. While the news came as a relief to many across the political spectrum, the intersections of Trump’s personal interests and political powers reach far beyond his charitable foundation and into a deep web of branding and investment.

First, there is the matter of the Trump hotels. Located in key locations across the world, these businesses present ample opportunity for de facto diplomacy. The decision to stay at a Trump establishment could very seriously become a statement of policy in the upcoming administration. Beyond hotels, Trump has holdings in major areas of diplomatic controversy, like the Philippines and Turkey. President Duterte, the controversial and violent new leader of the Philippines, recently appointed a Trump business partner as his special trade envoy to the Washington. Trump’s financial investment in these areas could become a bargaining chip in policy creation- especially those surrounding human rights and labor. A commonly overlooked factor is Trump’s immense debt to Deutsche Bank, which has the potential to face multi-billion dollar fines from a Justice Department investigation. But with Trump in the seat of the President, the Department of Justice will soon be run by people handpicked by the man himself. Needless to say, to enumerate a complete list of possible conflicts of interest would be exhausting and depressing. The process of chipping away at these issues will be just as painful.

One of the major obstacles in the fight to regulate Trump’s business ties is the nature of his economic holdings. Most of the ethics laws for those in the political sphere revolve around old-school big-pocket politicians who based their wealth in stocks and bonds. Yet with his global real estate shares and wide-reaching brand investment, Trump’s domain lies outside of traditional twentieth century wealth- and, consequently,  traditional political ethics regulations. If there is a bright light at the end of the very dark tunnel we call 2016, it is the existence of the emoluments clause of the Constitution, which essentially bans government officials from receiving gifts from foreign agents. Trump’s international business profits can be loosely interpreted as emoluments, but whether Democrats can successfully lobby for legal legitimacy to this interpretation is a battle for the January legislative session.

Just weeks after his presidential victory, worries over Trump’s conflicts of interest have already gained legitimacy. In mid-November, almost one-hundred foreign diplomats toured the newly inaugurated Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC as a potential spot for national visits. In an unexplained- though hardly inexplicable- move, Bahrain recently switched an event originally booked at a separate DC location to the Trump Hotel. While Trump has promised to hand over his business empire to his children, this does nothing to eliminate the powerful force of diplomatic expectation- not to mention the fact that Ivanka, Eric, and Donald Jr. hardly constitute a blind trust.

Donald Trump is, at the core, a brand. To separate Trump from his business empire is to delegitimize his one claim to the presidency- namely, his business empire. It may very well be impossible to completely eliminate the conflicts of interest that are bound to plague the Trump administration, but Democrats and Republicans alike are duty bound to try. Perhaps the best gift Donald Trump could have bestowed upon the American people this Christmas Eve wasn’t a bogus promise to shut down an already flailing organization, but rather something a tad more substantial: his letter of resignation.