Trump Hotels adopt 'America First' stance as expansion plans focus on domestic market

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As US President Donald Trump signs executive orders aimed at secluding America, the business he refuses to divest from is planning major domestic expansions.

Trump Hotel’s CEO Eric Danziger told reporters after a summit panel discussion that out of 26 major metropolitan areas in the US, the hotel brand is in five. “I don’t see any reason that we couldn’t be in all of them eventually.” Danziger said.

The flourishing of the Trump name and subsequent potential boons for the namesake organisation throws up further questions for a president already rife with conflict of interest accusations.

Along with hinting at the hotel chain’s expansion, Danziger said that planned expansion into China was “pretty much off”, adding “both brands and any others we create will have a domestic emphasis for the next four or eight years.” His comments drew laughter from the crowd, Bloomberg reported.

China has been the butt of numerous Trump attacks online and off. In 2012, he tweeted that climate change was a hoax created by China “to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”

Trump also enflamed tensions between the two superpowers quickly into his tenancy as President-elect by conducting a phone call with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen in early December and later saying that the US did not have to be bound by the long standing One China policy.

The suggested national expansion of Trump hotels also comes after the Trump-owned Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, which Trump has previously dubbed ‘the Winter White House’, doubled its ‘initiation fee’ to $200,000.

Trump has refused to divest from his sprawling business empire, instead handing the company to his two sons and saying “they are not going to discuss it with me”.

Director of the US Office of Government Ethics, Walter Shaub, called the plan “wholly inadequate” in a conference at the Brookings Institute.

“We can’t risk creating the perception that government leaders would use their official positions for profit. That’s why I was glad in November when the President-elect tweeted that he wanted to, as he put it, “in no way have a conflict of interest” with his business.

“Unfortunately, his current plan cannot achieve that goal.” Shaub said, according to a copy of his prepared remarks.

In September, while still just a presidential nominee, Trump opened a Washington, D.C. branch of his eponymous hotel chain which was quickly embroiled in conflict of interest accusations. The lease of the hotel stipulates that elected officials can not profit from the building, with some suggesting that Trump will have to forgo his stake in the hotel now that he is president.

The hotel again was subject to controversy when the Kingdom of Bahrain chose it to host national day celebrations. US President are forbidden from accepting money from foreign governments under the foreign emoluments clause.

Trump has said that any money generated from foreign governments would be handed to the US Treasury, though this will likely not assuage concerns that foreign powers could use the hotel in attempts to gain favour with the administration.