Trump family's new business partner is India's richest man
India's richest man has joined the ranks of foreign developers pouring money into President Trump's real-estate firm, as the first family ramps up dealmaking after years of aversion to mixing business with global politics.
Investors planning Trump-branded projects in Vietnam, Dubai and Saudi Arabia and elsewhere paid the Trump Organization $44.6 million in foreign licensing and development fees in 2024, up from $8.2 million in 2023 and $9.4 million in 2022, according to the president's annual financial disclosure report.
While most of the money relates to previously announced deals, the disclosure report included a $10 million 'development fee" from Reliance 4IR Realty Development, a unit of a company controlled by multibillionaire Mukesh Ambani, licensing the Trump name in Mumbai.
It is unclear what project Ambani has planned: his Reliance Industries is a vast family-run conglomerate with an enormous petrochemicals business and interests in retail and telecom—and his companies have lobbied U.S. officials on tariffs, sanctions and policies about oil, lobbying reports show. Real-estate development hasn't historically been a Reliance focus, but in recent years the conglomerate has taken on large projects including redevelopment of a more than 4,000-acre area in Mumbai.
Ambani attended Trump's inauguration in Washington, D.C., in January, and was a guest last month at a state dinner in Doha, in which the Qatar emir hosted the U.S. president.
Taken with a set of real-estate projects announced this year in Qatar and elsewhere in India, the burst of foreign Trump deals stands as a highly visible display of the family strategy to steam ahead with expansion plans across the president's businesses while he sits in the White House.
His growing reach spans an array of sectors—including golf, cryptocurrency and a recently announced Trump mobile phone—marking a major break from previous administrations that sought to keep the presidency separated from potential conflicts of interest. While the deals have sparked criticism from Democratic lawmakers and governance advocates, there has been little public resistance from the Republicans who control Congress.
In the first term, the Trump Organization pledged a halt to foreign dealmaking while he was in office—essentially putting a stop to any new real-estate projects from the company. Donald Trump Jr, a company executive who oversees the president's assets with his brother, Eric Trump, said at a Qatar-based conference in May that recusal from deals didn't stop criticism, so this time the family has lowered the self-imposed guardrails—vowing only to avoid direct deals with foreign governments.
'We said we're going to play by the rules, but we're not going to go so far as to stymie our business forever," Donald Trump Jr. said.
A White House spokeswoman said the president is working to secure good 'deals for the American people, not for himself," and said there were no conflicts of interest.
Representatives of Reliance didn't respond to requests for comment. A Trump Organization spokeswoman declined to comment on the tie-up with Ambani.
Among the concerns from critics: The nature of real-estate development—where government approvals are crucial—makes it difficult to avoid getting tangled up with foreign politics.
In Vietnam, the government accelerated approvals for a Trump project at the same time it was lobbying heavily to reduce its 46% tariff rate set by Trump. Qatari officials hosted Eric Trump for an event launching a new Trump-branded golf resort two weeks before the president visited the country for trade and investment talks. Another project in Serbia—where a fund run by the president's son-in-law Jared Kushner is planning a trio of towers—has become a rallying point for opponents of the country's president, who has doubled down on support for the project.
The burst of payments on the president's 2024 disclosures are likely precursors for more money set to flow when the projects are completed.
Details in the disclosures filed Friday are sparse, but the 2024 payments are similar to past upfront fees that are often part of Trump's licensing deals in which third-party developers build and own hotels and condos branded as Trump properties. For years, such deals have been Trump's bread and butter in real estate, allowing him to profit without plowing money into buildings. The Trump Organization typically receives a mix of set fees and a portion of sales.
The most active developer was Dar al Arkan, a Saudi company that accounted for $22 million of the foreign license fees last year for Trump-branded projects planned in Saudi Arabia, Oman and Dubai, according to the disclosure report. Other fees included $5 million from the Vietnamese developer, Hung Yen Hospitality, and $5.2 million from another Dubai developer, Damac.
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