Trump's $400M jet gift joins America's bumpy legacy of memorable foreign gifts

Yahoo

27-05-2025

Concerns about a luxury jetliner gifted by a Middle East monarch to the United States have dominated headlines — and social media posts, arguing for and against it — for days.
Nations routinely give each other gifts with mixed results, but the $200 million to $400 million airplane has raised eyebrows for several reasons, including its extraordinary value and appeal to the current White House occupant.
Still, in addition to the concerns, the jet is a reminder of how gifts have influenced relationships between nations, sometimes turning out to have more complicated stories than many realize, and — as with the Boeing 474 from Qatar — come with costs.
Other gifts include: a present from Thailand in 1862 that was declined; the Statue of Liberty from France for the centennial, which was missing a base to mount it on; thousands of cherry trees from Japan, which American later reciprocated with gifts; and two pandas from China in the 1970s, which political scientists have dubbed "panda diplomacy."
There is also a well-known and well-studied political speech that the then-senator Richard Nixon delivered to save his political career when running for vice president. The most memorable part of it was a personal gift that he defiantly announced to America he was definitely keeping.
As for the free jet, some public officials, such as Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat, have raised concerns about it being more than a token of international friendship to deepen cultural understanding and questioned what Qatar might seek in exchange.
Last Thursday, the same day the jet was officially accepted, South Africa's president, Cyril Ramaphosa, quipped during a tense meeting in the White House with President Donald Trump, "I'm sorry I don't have a plane to give you."
Trump responded he'd take it, and he has equated Qatar's extravagant gift to a gimme in golf, remarking: "I could say, 'No, no, no, don't give us, I want to pay you a billion, or $400 million,' or whatever it is. Or, I could say, 'Thank you very much.' "
But in 1862, there was a foreign gift that President Abraham Lincoln turned down.
The reason wasn't because he had fears that it would signal an improper relationship with Thailand, but as Lincoln suggested in his reply to the King of Thailand, then known as Siam, that it was a generous gesture, but that elephants were not a practical gift to accept.
Lincoln politely declined.
Later accounts speculate that the monarch offered the animals to help fight the civil war.
Elephants have a place in military history as terrifying beasts. Carthaginian general Hannibal, in 218 B.C., used them to cross the Alps and to attack the Romans, which many European soldiers had never seen until then.
Still, some historians suggest the idea that elephants might have been for the war appears not to have come from the king, but from Lincoln. In this account, Secretary of State William Seward asked the president what they should do with the elephants?
Lincoln responded: Perhaps they could "stamp out the rebellion."
Either way, Lincoln told Somdetch Phra Paramendr Maha Mongut that "our laws forbid the president from receiving these rich presents as personal treasures" and they were "accepted in accordance with your majesty's desire as tokens of your good will and friendship for the American people."
As for the elephants, Lincoln explained the American climate was unsuitable for them.
Perhaps the best-known gift to America is the Statue of Liberty.
In 1865, the French decided to commemorate America's centennial with a gift. The idea was proposed by French historian and abolitionist Édouard de Laboulaye. Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi's designed the statue.
He completed the head and the torch-bearing arm, which were exhibited at international expositions in Philadelphia in 1876 and then in New York until 1882. Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel, who engineered his namesake tower in Paris, created the support structure.
By one estimate, the French spent $250,000 to make the copper-covered structure, more than $7.8 million in today's dollars. The French, however, didn't provide the money for a pedestal, which would end up costing more than the statue, and Americans — to erect it — had to come up with it.
A committee raised some of the money. Joseph Pulitzer, a publisher and entrepreneur, started a drive for private donations to collect the rest. It also was a way to sell newspapers. Pulitzer promised to print donor names.
Contributions came in from 120,000-plus people, each mostly giving less than a dollar.
For more than 100 years, the statue has symbolized America's close relationship with France as well as its commitment to democracy and freedom. The statue has been, with an upheld torch and broken chains at its feet, a beacon for millions of immigrants.
Lady Liberty is also something that at least one French politician, Raphael Glucksmann, suggested earlier this year that, given America's immigration crackdown and associations with those he called "tyrants," the United States should send back.
In 1909, Japan — through the City of Tokyo — gave 2,000 cherry trees to the United States to be planted along the Potomac River. They bloom each spring in an explosion of white and pink petals.
In this case, however, the idea for the gift came from Americans.
For years, Eliza Scidmore, a world traveler, thought they'd be the perfect addition to the riverfront and lobbied American officials to plant the Japanese trees there for years. Scidmore eventually appealed to First Lady Helen Taft, who had lived in Japan, and she loved the concept.
Then, a Japanese chemist who was in D.C. helped smooth the way for the gift. Japan shipped the trees to Seattle. From there, they went to Washington, D.C. But when they arrived, they were infested with insects and had to be destroyed.
In 1912, Japan tried again, gifting 3,000 trees. Helen Taft and the wife of the Japanese ambassador, who the First Lady presented with American Beauty roses, ceremoniously planted some of them.
In 1915, President Robert Taft gifted Japan some American dogwood trees.
After World War II, Japan gifted a stone lantern and a pagoda to add to the area. And in 1965, it sent thousands more cheery trees. First Lady Lady Bird Johnson and the Japanese ambassador's wife re-enacted the 1912 planting ceremony.
In 2012, to mark the 100th anniversary of the original cherry blossom tree planting, First Lady Michelle Obama and the then-wife of the Japanese ambassador planted another cherry tree, and the United States reciprocated by gifting Japan thousands of dogwoods.
In 1972, First Lady Pat Nixon mentioned to the Chinese premier that she thought pandas were cute, and as a gesture of goodwill following President Richard Nixon's state visit to China, Zhou Enlai gifted the American people two giant pandas.
Pandas are native to China, and fewer than 2,000 of them are estimated to live in the wild.
China has a history of gifting pandas to symbolize alliances dating to the 600s and has been conducting what political scientists now call "panda diplomacy" by giving and loaning pandas to other countries, which include Japan, France, Britain and Germany.
China's panda gifts to America, Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing, ended up in the Smithsonian's National Zoo, and America, in return, sent two muskox, Matilda and Milton, to China, but they didn't survive for long.
There also is one story about a personal gift, which Nixon accepted before becoming president and refused to return, that might have relevance as officials debate the jet that Trump coveted and experts estimated will cost $1 billion to retrofit to make secure.
Nixon — who, at the time, was a California senator and the Republican nominee for vice president — was caught in a budding scandal. He addressed the allegations in a nationally televised talk that became known as the "Checkers Speech."
Accused of improprieties and in jeopardy of getting kicked off the Republican ticket with Dwight Eisenhower, Nixon defended himself by telling his "fellow Americans" what he called his "side of the case."
It's unclear whether the concerns raised in 1952 were a warning for what President Gerald Ford later called "our long national nightmare" that led to Nixon's resignation, but, at the moment, the California senator's candid, defiant address saved his political career.
Nixon said he did not take money for personal use and was not "a rich man."
He said Pat "doesn't have a mink coat. But she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat," and he disclosed a gift — which is how the speech got its name — that a man in Texas sent him after hearing his two young daughters wanted a dog.
It was, Nixon said, a black-and-white spotted cocker spaniel.
"Our little girl, Trisha, the 6-year-old, named it Checkers," Nixon said, adamantly adding "the kids love the dog and I just want to say this right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we're gonna keep it."
Contact Frank Witsil: 313-222-5022 or [e-mail].
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Trump's $400M jet joins rocky legacy of memorable foreign gifts to US