The Trump Organization has agreed to a new Middle East golf course and real estate deal that involves a Qatari government-owned firm, two weeks before President Trump is set to travel to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates on a state visit.
The project in Qatar, a key U.S. ally and home to a major American military base, is a partnership with Qatari Diar, a real estate company established by the country’s sovereign wealth fund and chaired by a government minister.
Eric Trump, the president’s son who runs the family business, traveled to the Middle East this week to attend a cryptocurrency conference and promote the company’s real estate developments, which include a separate Trump-branded tower in Dubai, the largest city in the Emirates.
The two projects will also involve Dar Global, the international subsidiary of the private Saudi real estate firm Dar Al Arkan, which is leading the project and has close ties to the Saudi government. The Qatar project was initially reported by Reuters.
The Trump golf course in Qatar is the most recent in a series of projects that directly involve foreign governments. In Oman, the Trump family has partnered on a Dar Global hotel and golf project that is being built on state-owned land, and the government will get a share of the revenues generated, according to company documents. In Serbia, the Trump family is planning a new hotel in collaboration with Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law.
During Mr. Trump’s first term, the family held off signing international deals while he was in office. In January, before Mr. Trump was inaugurated as president for a second time, the Trump Organization issued a formal ethics statement that it would have “no new transactions with foreign governments” but would pursue international deals.
Eric Trump said in a statement on Wednesday that his family continued to honor this pledge, as Dar Global had purchased the land from the Qatari government entity.
“Our partners Dar purchased land from them,” Mr. Trump said, after he appeared at a signing event with Dar Global and representatives from the Qatari government. “We have zero relationship with them — they are there showing me the vision of the city.”
But the Trump Organization has accelerated its international real estate deal-making in the months since the elder Mr. Trump was re-elected, including a new development in Vietnam.
Few places exemplify the Trump family’s fluid melding of business with politics as clearly as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the Emirates, the three countries in the Gulf that Mr. Trump will visit.
Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, the deputy ruler of Abu Dhabi and the national security adviser of the Emirates, also oversees a vast business empire and chairs G42, one of the region’s leading artificial intelligence firms. In Qatar, the energy minister heads its state energy company.
In Saudi Arabia, nearly every major business has ties to the state, either via government-owned stakes in the companies or extensive government contracts.
The president will arrive in the region on May 13 and bypass the Middle East’s traditional power centers, such as Egypt, in favor of three financial centers that collectively manage trillions in assets via their sovereign wealth funds.
In 2017, Mr. Trump made Saudi Arabia his first foreign destination as president. When he left office, the kingdom became a key source of new business for his family. LIV Golf, a professional league backed by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund and rival to the PGA Tour, has hosted tournaments at the Trump National Doral Golf Club near Miami. The wealth fund has also invested $2 billion in an investment firm that Mr. Kushner set up after he left his post as a White House adviser during the president’s first term.
The president has said he wants to bring in $1 trillion in investment to the United States from his trip to Saudi Arabia. But economists say that is unlikely as the kingdom faces a cash crunch.
Dubai, where a new 80-story Trump International Hotel and Tower will overlook the world’s tallest skyscraper, is a “developer’s playground,” Eric Trump said in an interview on Tuesday with CNBC.
“We’re going to come in here and build a crown jewel and everybody is going to know, that’s Trump International Hotel and Tower,” he said. “That’s Trump.”
The project will also allow purchasers to use cryptocurrency to buy properties, he said at a Dar Global event in Dubai this week. World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s cryptocurrency firm, has recently negotiated deals with firms in the region. These include the Emirates-based DWF Labs, which recently became one of the largest known holders of the World Liberty token after investing $25 million in the firm.
In recent years, amid slow global growth and high interest rates, state-backed entities in the Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been some of the few reliable sources of capital. In March, the Emirati government pledged to invest $1.4 trillion in the United States over a decade. This week, Phil Murphy, the Democratic governor of New Jersey, began a trip to Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Bahrain, seeking investment.
In most of the Trump Organization’s foreign deals, the company’s partners put up the capital to construct the hotels, towers or golf courses. The Trump family is effectively selling its name and brand, and typically plays a long-term role in managing the properties.
The Trump Organization is paid a branding fee up front and annual payments afterward for the foreign branding deals and management fees that collectively are worth about $10 million a year, according to a 2024 financial disclosure. Mr. Trump has turned over management of his companies to his sons, but he still benefits financially from these foreign projects.
Zephyr Teachout, a professor of corporate and anticorruption law at Fordham Law School in New York, was part of a team that sued Mr. Trump during his first term for allegedly taking improper financial payments from foreign governments. The lawsuit, which Mr. Trump’s lawyers challenged, was deemed moot by the Supreme Court after Mr. Trump’s first term ended and before the case was decided. It has not been refiled.
Ms. Teachout said Mr. Trump’s latest actions are even more worrisome. “It is extremely troubling,” she said. “The Qatari government military and trade decisions are now unavoidably a part of the broader private negotiation over a real estate deal.”
The Qatari government did not respond to a request for comment. Qatari Diar did not respond to calls made to its headquarters after business hours but wrote on social media that it had partnered with Dar Global to launch Trump International Golf Club & Villas in an oceanfront area called Simaisma. The project would offer “a new standard of luxury living with an 18-hole golf course, exclusive clubhouse and beachfront Trump-branded villas,” it said.
Eric Trump told The New York Times after attending a signing event for the new deal that the golf course and villas would be “beautiful” and “right on the ocean.”
His father’s business relationships in the Gulf predate his political career. Hussain Sajwani, the founder and chairman of DAMAC Properties of Dubai, built the first Trump-branded golf course in the Middle East a decade ago.
The Trump family’s ties to the region have deepened since he entered politics, with the Trump Organization announcing three real estate projects with Dar Global in the Saudi cities of Jeddah and Riyadh last year.
The Trump Tower in Dubai will include a Trump-branded members-only club and “the highest outdoor pool in the world,” Dar Global and the Trump Organization said in a news release on Wednesday.
Eric Trump used his visit to Dubai to trumpet his family’s ties to the emirate and the region. “On behalf of myself, on behalf of my family, we love Dubai, we love the Gulf,” he said at the Dar Global event. “We have such a great relationship between the United States and just one of the greatest places. And I’m proud to call so many of you friends.”
Ismaeel Naar contributed reporting from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Vivian Nereim is the lead reporter for The Times covering the countries of the Arabian Peninsula. She is based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Eric Lipton is a Times investigative reporter, who digs into a broad range of topics from Pentagon spending to toxic chemicals.
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