Donald Trump ran for the White House promising to drain the swamp and end Washington’s culture of shady backroom deals. He is also the first man to win the presidency while also heading a business empire.
This creates complex difficulties and it is not immediately obvious how they should or can be handled. But Trump must find a way to ameliorate or eliminate multitudinous conflicts of interest that come with the fact that he has properties and financial interests that could profit or lose because of the policies he decides to pursue.
There have been many wealthy presidents in the past, including Franklin D. Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover and Lyndon B. Johnson, each of whom boasted impressive personal fortunes when elected.
But those were easy to put into a blind trust, for they were investments such as stocks and bonds, not golf courses, hotels and the like, that cannot be hidden from the nation’s chief executive. The United States has never had a president who came to the White House as a business CEO, managing a sprawling company with his name plastered all over it and all over buildings around the world.
Trump has active business interests and debts at home and abroad, both of which could undermine trust in whatever positions he adopts and promotes over the next four years.
If he isn’t careful, his administration could find itself mired in a congressional investigation of whether policies are decided to benefit his business interests. Already his daughter, Ivanka, has been photographed with her father as he met Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. If Trump plans, as he said during the campaign, to put his businesses in the hands of this children, how is there any separation of his official duties and his business interests if Ivanka sits in on his first meeting with the head of a foreign government?
The president-elect will no doubt hear more about his loan from the Bank of China and the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, which prohibits presidents from accepting gifts or payments from foreign governments. Trump will also likely hear more about his new hotel in the nation’s capitol, which he leases from the federal government that he will soon control.
Trump needs to build a wall between himself and his businesses. His lawyers are working on this knotty problem, and they had better come up with something convincing. If the clear conflicts of interest are not dealt with, Trump will pay for it in lost support, and the nation will pay for it in lost faith in its institutions.
Trump could sell all his business holdings. But is that fair? Should men or women who have successfully built businesses be forced to sell up and bail out as soon as they go into politics? Does that not put a sign over the White House door saying, “No entry for business people.” If Trump were forced into a fire sale of his holdings, it might depress their price, although there are attractive tax breaks related to that. But, on the other hand, maybe buyers would happily pay premium prices to curry favor with the incoming chief executive. So isn’t that a conflict of interest, too?
As noted, it’s a complicated problem.
Transferring business control to the next generation of Trumps is vastly less reassuring than a blind trust. Could Trump plausibly promise not to discuss the real estate business when the kids come over for dinner?
One thing Trump must do is make up his mind right now about the role his children are going to play. If they’re going to run his businesses, they shouldn’t be participating in his transition team.
Trump could look to Congress for a few clues about how to reconcile the duties of public office with personal business interests. But congressional rules are nothing like a comprehensive guide. They bar lawmakers from engaging in outside work that could pose a “time conflict,” and “detract from a member’s full time and attention to his official duties.” Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., one of the wealthiest members of Congress, walks an extremely fine line as an active businessman separating his personal interest from the duties of his office.
But members of Congress can always abstain from voting on issues that might affect their own business directly. A president cannot abstain from policymaking. There is no one else to do it for him.
This unique situation will call for a unique solution. And it is difficult to see from here. Just as Americans are probably going to have to show some understanding about the impossibility of completely walling his businesses off, so must Trump do whatever is possible to reassure the public that his administration is not a huge personal business play.
