Trump’s company isn’t banning private foreign deals during his presidency

At a bitcoin conference in Nashville this summer, Donald Trump promised to make the U.S. the “crypto capital of the planet,” and the president-elect has placed bitcoin champions high in his administration. The Trump family business released a voluntary ethics agreement Friday that marks a significant departure from Donald Trump’s first term by allowing it to strike deals with private foreign companies. The Trump Organization recently struck deals for hotels and golf resorts in Vietnam, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, raising concerns by government ethics experts that Donald Trump’s personal financial interests could influence policy toward those countries. People trying to win Trump’s favor now have an easy way to do so, she said, by using “massive influxes of cash through ‘investments’ in Trump crypto and real estate ventures.” The Trump Organization announced that it was hiring William A. Burck, a managing partner of Quinn Emanuel LLP, to vet deals that could pose conflicts with public policy. As in the last ethics agreement, the five-page white paper prohibits Trump from “day-to-day” decision making at the Trump Organization, limits financial information about the business shared with him and commits the company to donate to the U.S. Treasury profits from foreign government spending at its properties.