Mixing family business with US trade policy in Vietnam

0:01NPR.

0:11This is The Indicator from Planet Money. I'm Weyland Wong. And I'm Adrian Ma. Last month, President Trump's son Eric paid a visit to Vietnam. He's an executive vice president at the Family Business, the Trump organization. And Eric was in town to break ground on a$1.5 billion project. The company is building a luxury residential development and golf course in the Hongyan province, which is right outside Hanoi. This groundbreaking ceremony was important enough that Vietnamese Prime Minister Fa Min Chin attended. And he suggested in his public remarks that this golf course project will help smooth Vietnam-U.S.

0:47relations. The two countries are in trade talks right now, and Vietnam is hoping to avoid a sky-high 46 percent tariff rate. But this potential intermingling of official trade policy with Trump family business raises red flags when it comes to government ethics. Today on the show, we look at those flags and how Vietnam's difficult position in the trade war may have push the government to fast-track a deal.

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2:04Because when it comes to your finances, your business, your future, LPL Financial believes the only question should be, what if you could? LPL Financial, member FINRA SIPC. No strategy assures success or protects against loss. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principle. Back in 2017, in the early months of the first Trump administration, Jessica Tillotman was invited by a U.S. federal agency to lead a training session for foreign government officials. Jessica is an associate dean at the George Washington University Law School, and she was there to teach these foreign leaders how they could improve their ethics and anti-corruption rules back home.

2:42And they asked me about the ethics rules, and I said, well, you know, they are very strong in the United States, but they don't apply to our president or vice president. And there was laughter in the room from a country that has very significant corruption issues. And it was not laughing with us. It was a laughing at us. Laughing at us. Just roaring with laughter. And you're just standing in front of your PowerPoint like, anyway. Look at how strong our ethics rules. You should adopt something similar. That's a little bit awkward. But here is what Jessica was explaining to those foreign officials.

3:19In the U.S., the majority of executive branch employees are covered by ethics rules. These rules are less about violating the law than they are about appearances. You know, giving the impression that government officials might have a conflict of interest. There's a wide variety of ethics rules that relate to everything from the acceptance of gifts, appearances of maybe favoritism. We're really going to things that would keep the American public from considering that their public officials might be acting in their own private interest instead of public interest. And as she said, these rules don't apply to the president and the vice president.

3:55Jessica says there are a couple of theories around why this is the case. One is that these leaders need more latitude. Another theory has to do with not wanting Congress to infringe on what the executive branch does. Either way, Jessica says, presidents have followed a longstanding tradition to avoid conflicts of interest or the appearance of conflicts. And they've done this by putting their assets in what's called a blind trust. That means during their presidency, an independent manager controls some of their assets. Trump broke with this precedent during his first term. He put his holdings in a trust that he could tap for funds whenever he wanted.

4:29And as for other ethics considerations, Trump's lawyer did publicly unveil a plan for him to avoid conflicts of interest during his first term. But Jessica says it didn't amount to much. There wasn't a lot of meat to it. It was kind of more of a skeletal, high-level commitment to being ethical with some sort of oversight and guidance frameworks put into place. we started to see in practice that these kind of overarching commitments weren't necessarily followed. Flash forward to the second Trump presidency, and there's a new voluntary ethics pledge. But Jessica says the commitments are even lighter this time around.

5:06So it's harder to trust that the president is avoiding conflicts of interest. The ethics restrictions within the United States government get to not only actual issues of concern, but appearance issues. We've talked about the Trump meme coin on our show, and there's also that plane you might remember that the Trump administration accepted from Qatar. And now this$1.5 billion project in Vietnam. Right now we have a burning red flag appearance issue. I'm sure that other countries are watching this. And the biggest concern is that are certain trade deals being negotiated with the American interests in mind or with the Trump families in mind?

5:45And, you know, the goal is to not have these types of questions. The Trump Organization may also build a tower in Ho Chi Minh City. And the Vietnamese government reportedly fast-tracked approvals for the golf course project. Waving through this development may be Vietnam's most pragmatic option in the trade war. That's according to Hein Nguyen. She's from Vietnam and is currently a Ph.D. scholar at Australian National University. She's researching economic security in Southeast Asia. When it comes to leverage, unfortunately, Vietnam doesn't have a lot. So we try to get closer to Trump business and the Trump family.

6:25It's definitely a gamble. But at the same time, Vietnam just doesn't have a lot of choice. Heinz says Vietnam's government sees economic growth as a crucial part of its political legitimacy. Vietnam's economy expanded 7 % in 2024. It benefited from the first Trump administration's trade war with China. And that's because a lot of companies like Hasbro and Apple shifted some of their manufacturing from China to Vietnam to, you know, avoid the tariffs that were on Chinese goods. On the downside, that created a large trade deficit with the U.S., which, as we know, the Trump administration hates. The Vietnamese government has tried to build goodwill with the U.S.

7:05It agreed to buy more American agricultural products. It's also cracking down on when companies reroute products from China to Vietnam and then label them as made in Vietnam to avoid paying those higher tariffs on Chinese goods. And despite these measures, Heinz says Vietnam is still under pressure. It's caught between the U.S. and China, two economic superpowers that are at loggerheads. Things definitely does not look good right now for Vietnam because the U.S. reportedly sent a list of demands that Vietnam-based factories to reduce their use of materials and components from China. Vietnam's manufacturing sector is dependent on imported raw materials from regional supply chains based in China.

7:49Reducing or even cutting off like input materials and components from China will cause significant damage to Vietnam's economy. Ethics expert Jessica Tillettman worries that the Trump organization may pursue more questionable deals like the one it has in Vietnam. She raised similar concerns about conflicts of interest during the Biden administration when the president's son Hunter was selling artwork. Jessica flagged at the time that some people might be buying the art to influence the president. She says the concerns are even greater now because of Trump's involvement in his family business, a company that's doing deals in countries negotiating with the U.S.

8:25government. And the numbers are much bigger, too. Hunter Biden reportedly made around$1.5 million from his artwork sales. The Trump Organization's deals around the world add up to billions of dollars. The president of the United States holds a unique position that's able to control so many different levers within the United States government. And so, you know, for four years, is it too much to ask any presidential family to try to take steps to reduce those concerns? I don't think that's too much to ask for such an incredible opportunity to lead the country. You know, but reasonable minds can disagree.

9:03And clearly, the current administration disagrees with me and many other ethics experts on this point. We reached out to the Trump Organization and the White House about the ethics concerns around the Vietnam golf course. We did not hear back from the White House, but the Trump Organization responded that the project has, quote, zero connection to the administration or to its policies and was signed long before Trump's re-election. For clarity, the project was signed in September 2024. This episode was produced by Corey Bridges with engineering by Jimmy Keeley. It's fact-checked by Sarah Juarez.

9:36Kate Kincannon is our show's editor and the indicators of production of NPR.

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