ICYMI: Trump’s Businesses “Could Present Conflicts of Interest, Make the Presidency Vulnerable to Foreign Influence, and Violate Federal Law” Arrow

Key Point: "If [Trump] continues to hawk his merchandise after returning to the White House, that could raise ethical concerns. Consumer goods may be the least of Trump's issues, however. He has a number of business ventures - including his social media platform, a nascent crypto firm, and the Trump Organization's partnerships in the Middle East - that could present conflicts of interest, make the presidency vulnerable to foreign influence, and violate federal law."

Vox: Trump's for-profit presidency

By Nicole Narea

• If [Trump] continues to hawk his merchandise after returning to the White House, that could raise ethical concerns. Consumer goods may be the least of Trump's issues, however. He has a number of business ventures - including his social media platform, a nascent crypto firm, and the Trump Organization's partnerships in the Middle East - that could present conflicts of interest, make the presidency vulnerable to foreign influence, and violate federal law.
• While President Jimmy Carter famously put his peanut farm in a blind trust, Trump had his sons take over the Trump Organization when he became president in 2016. His global business empire reaped $2.4 billion in revenue, including from foreign governments, in the four years that followed. Government ethics organizations consequently sued him, claiming that he had violated the foreign emoluments clause, but the litigation was never resolved before he left office.
• Now, that litigation may be reprised, potentially providing harder limits on presidents' ability to benefit financially from their time in office.
• Overall, the government oversight group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) estimated that Trump benefited from about $13.6 million in payments from foreign governments during his first term as a result.
• Chief among these conflicts of interest is his stake in the publicly traded parent company of Truth Social, the president-elect's social media platform. […] Never before has a president had such a significant stake in a publicly traded company, and for good reason: Foreign actors could easily and entirely legally buy up its stock, inflating its value and Trump's net worth. Not only that, they could also "threaten to just dump all their shares at once, which would crater his net worth," giving them potentially a "huge amount of leverage over the president," said Jordan Libowitz, a spokesperson for CREW.
• The Trump Organization has also recently struck a series of deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars to construct luxury hotels and properties in Saudi Arabia, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as established a partnership with the Saudi-funded LIV Golf. That has drawn Trump into an even closer relationship with the Saudis, which dates back to 2017 when he made the country stop number one on his first overseas trip as president.
• Libowitz raised concerns about a $30 million investment in [Trump's World Liberty Financial] from Chinese crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun, who is currently fighting fraud charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission. Trump and his family are expected to net roughly $20 million thanks to that deal, according to the BBC. Notably, Trump has recently nominated crypto advocate Paul Atkins to head the SEC.